Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court
by tielan
Summary: Besieged by the Hydra for over 20 years, SHIELD Territory has waited for a strong Queen to rise. This is a story of connections, of coincidences, and of commonality as a court forms around a young woman with the steel soul necessary to rule. [Avengers fusion into Black Jewels universe; ensemble cast, with background pairings of Tony/Pepper, Clint/Natasha, and past Steve/Peggy]
1. Meant To Serve

**SUMMARY**: _Until this moment, he'd never met the Queen he was meant to serve._

**NOTES**: This is a crossover between the Avengers (movie) and the Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop. It's what happens when you blurt an idea out to your f-list and they promptly encourage you to run with it. It's completed, and in thirteen parts, with characters from all through the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and others besides) turning up. There's a sequel planned, but we'll see how much time I have this holiday season. I hope you enjoy the story!

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 1: Meant To Serve**

Standing at the edge of the thriving kitchen garden, Nick felt his instincts – the instincts of a Sapphire-Jewelled, warrior-trained Warlord Prince of the Blood – prick to sharp awareness.

He didn't need to kneel down and press his hand against the soil to sense the vibrancy in the cleared patch of land here. It had been years since he'd felt it, but he knew the feel of ground that had been fed by a Queen.

Many others wouldn't.

In the decades after the Scarlet Purges, too many Queens had gone into hiding. A few had stood up to protect the land and form courts, only to be swept away in another Purge, another slaughter. Those left had been too weak, too old, or too dispirited to bond to the land or to the Blood males left seeking the anchoring connection to a Queen. And in their absence, the land had suffered, and the Blood – male and female alike – with it.

Yet in this cottage, a Queen survived, giving her strength to the land, following the traditions of the Blood.

Deep within his soul, Nick felt a stirring of something he'd thought long dead – hope.

It explained why Phil had sounded almost giddy when he'd spoken with Nick the previous day. The Tiger Eye-Jewelled Prince had given Nick instructions on how to reach the simple cottage in the woods and told him to come as soon as he could get away, but said nothing more.

A Queen – an unbroken Queen with the will and strength to have survived this long...

Nick stood and cast a sending on a Tiger Eye psychic thread, delicately attuned to a familiar mind. *Phil?*

*Nick!* Phil's response was instant and relief sang in his voice. *Thank the Darkness. We're under attack at the landen village in the valley! She's holding them off – Mother Night but someone taught her to shield – but she's draining fast, and she won't let me take over. Hurry!*

Nick leaped for the Sapphire Wind almost before Phil finished talking.

He'd seen the village when he dropped from the Sapphire Wind at the edge of the forest. A little hamlet down in the valley, with sheep dotting the hills and simple fields spreading across the plain, he'd thought nothing of it then. Landen villages were found everywhere, scattered throughout the Territory among the Blood villages, towns, and cities that existed all through the realm.

It wasn't unknown for landens to attack Blood – the history between the two races was hardly an easy one. And she was a Queen living without a court, without males to serve and defend her, too close to a landen village...

He dropped from the Winds a little way out from the village. He'd slid a Sapphire skin-tight shield over one created of his Birthright Purple Dusk Jewel, but skipped the sight-shield. His blade gleamed with the punch of Jewelled power, while his temper rose with the dangerous lethality of a Warlord Prince.

And then he saw what he faced.

He'd expected to face landens – angry and embittered, using the force of numbers to press against a lone Queen and the Prince she stubbornly refused to let defend her. Instead Nick stared at the army spread out across the fields and paddocks around the village, a uniform sea of males: dark-haired, sallow-skinned, their faces with the same blank cast to them.

_Hydra_.

Hundreds of them around the village – perhaps even a thousand. The clear Jewels in their collars gleamed like the battle-light in their blue eyes as they sent shot after shot of power into the Summer-sky barrier that encircled the landen village like a mother's arm around her child.

Phil was right; someone _had_ taught her how to shield.

They just hadn't taught her how to accept a male's help.

Even as Nick watched, he felt the shield falter – a patchy flicker before she bolstered it – although some Hydra still broke through into the empty streets of the village and were fought by the landens of the village.

He grimaced as he reached out with a Summer-sky psychic thread.

*Lady!*

He felt her surprise – and her caution. *Prince?*

*Let Phil take over!*

*He wears the Rose. I wear Summer-sky.*

*And your strength is running out. Let Phil shield you.* He dropped to the Rose psychic thread so Phil could hear them. *Coulson, take over!*

*I'm behind your shields, Lady,* Phil's voice was calm, the steady calm of a Prince, able to reassure as a Warlord Prince couldn't while riding the killing edge. *You can let go.*

She held on, the stubborn little chit. Nick's sight hazed scarlet, his protective instincts stung to the quick. He didn't have time for this – the Queen didn't have time for this. *I'll leave you to argue it,* he told Phil on a spear thread, male to male. *I'm going in.*

He felt rather than heard Phil's assent as he strode down towards the beleaguered village and the morass of Hydra that stood between him and the sheltering Queen.

The Hydra had noticed him, a small detachment breaking off to take him on directly.

The first of them died as Nick lashed out the instant they were in range. The crosswise cut slid through flesh and bone, and the second Hydra to reach him died as he swept his blade back. Eight more Hydra followed the first before one even got a hit in. The blow bounced off Nick's shields and he gutted the man with his next blow.

He lost track of time in the pulse of his blood and the punch of his Jewelled strength; a Warlord Prince of the Blood leaving a swathe of death and destruction behind him as he made his way step by steady step towards the village.

And still the Hydra came at him.

Their numbers were endless and their willingness to die unparalleled. Nick wasn't about to quarrel with that; he was more than willing to kill them by the thousand if needed.

But not until he was sure the Queen was safe.

He slammed through the shield surrounding the village – no longer Summer-sky, but Phil's familiar Rose – and turned, intending to find this Queen who hadn't had the sense to run when faced with an army of Hydra. Instead he found himself facing wary, armed landen males, from the old and grizzled greybeard who stood front and centre, to the beardless youths who handled their scythes with the same kind of familiarity with which Nick handled his weapons.

"Where is she?"

"That depends on what your business is with her."

"My business with the Queen is my business." Nick managed to keep from snarling at the males who stood in his way. If they'd been Blood they'd have had more sense than to stand between a Warlord Prince and the Queen he was seeking. "Where. Is. She?"

"Right here," said a cool, husky voice, and a slim, long-fingered hand came up to ease the leader of the landens aside.

Nick's first thought was that there was no way this slip of a girl could be the Queen he was seeking. Adolescent and skinny, dressed in old trousers and a shapeless shirt as though she was some kind of labourer? Mother Night, was she even old enough to wear Jewels?

Then a pair of wary grey eyes fixed on him, and Nick felt something squeeze his soul.

He'd heard about males finding the Queen they were meant to serve – about witches who tugged at something in a Blood male. It wasn't necessarily a sexual attraction but a psychic one: the connection between a Queen and the males that belonged to her in spirit.

He'd served in several Queens' courts through the years – both officially and unofficially. He knew what it meant to serve a Queen. But until this moment, he'd never met the Queen he was _meant_ to serve.

It threw him for a loop – the certainty of it – and he took refuge in temper. "What do you think you're doing?"

He instantly regretted it as the landens' weapons came up in wary protectiveness. Even Phil, familiar with Nick's temper, winced. But she didn't flinch although her eyes narrowed. "I'm protecting the land, Prince. As are you."

It punched him in the gut, although he probably shouldn't have been surprised. A Queen who would care for the land would care for the people on the land, too – and would recognise a Warlord Prince who did the same.

"And did you happen to have an exit strategy, or were you planning to die in here when Phil's shields failed and the Hydra overran the village?"

*Easy, Nick,* Phil said on a spear thread as one of the landen men made a motion like he was considering running Nick through with the pitchfork he held.

*I'll be easy when she's no longer threatened by an army of Hydra trying to kill her!*

"Coulson said that help was on the way." Her head tilted in challenge. "Did you manage to call for help before you got yourself stuck in here with the rest of us?"

He snorted. "Lady, I _am_ your help." _Sword arm and shield._

"Lady—" One of the landens stepped forward, touching her arm – a man old enough to be her grandfather. "Just because we're stuck here doesn't mean you need be. Now that Prince Coulson's friend is here, you should leave with them."

"No." Sharp and cold, her rejection of that idea was absolute. "You don't have the defences to deal with the Hydra."

"You need to get away."

"I'm not leaving you to die by the Hydra!"

"Lady, we mayn't be Blood," the old man said to her, although his gaze rested on Nick, "but we know the value of a Queen."

She frowned, and Nick sensed the uneasiness that crawled through her at the old man's words. "I'm not a Queen. I don't have a court."

_Not yet you don't,_ Nick thought. She was too young for a court yet, but when she was old enough to set one up, she would have the pick of the land in males.

Now, if Nick could just keep her alive long enough.

*Phil? How're your shields?*

*Holding. We have at least a couple of hours to persuade her to leave.* A pause. *Unless you have a better plan.*

Nick didn't quite smile. *Oddly enough, I do.*

"Lady," he interrupted the growing argument. More males had begun chiming in, trying to persuade her to leave, and of course the stubborn chit wasn't budging. Even if the landens knew the value of a Queen, they still didn't know how to handle one.

"Prince."

"I can deal with the Hydra here." It would drain him down to breaking point, but he could do it. He would do it. "But I want something in exchange."

Grey eyes stared at him, disbelieving. "You'd bargain with these people's lives?"

"If that's what it takes to get you to safety, yes."

His words hung in the air between them. Then her lips pressed together. "What do you want?"

"When the Hydra around this village are dealt with, we have a conversation, you and me."

"A conversation?"

"You know. Lips moving, words spoken – conversation. In public with witnesses if you prefer."

"Why?"

"That," he said with careful deliberation, "is what we need to have the conversation about."

She struggled with it for a moment – between her reluctance to give way to the males who wanted her safely gone, and Nick's alternative, which she distrusted. But she was a true Queen of the Blood; her protective instincts won out over her pride and although her mouth pinched tight, she nodded. "Deal with the Hydra, Prince."

*I'm guessing you're not going to go out and fight every last one of them,* Phil said dryly as Nick turned and strode towards the shield.

*I was thinking of using Stark's Expanding Circle.* He felt Phil's surprise.

*I thought it was Stark's Expanding _Half-_Circle.*

*I'm modifying it.* Nick paused. *If anything happens to me, you get her out of here, you get her back to the residence, and you get Stark on-side.*

He felt Phil's grimace. *You know Stark's been unstable since he was taken. Unpredictable – even more than he used to be. And with a Queen in the mix... I was thinking Natasha.*

*Risky or not, Stark still has the connections and the strength. And he's a Warlord Prince.*

Stark would instinctively understand the value of a good Queen, even if he was damaged, even if he and Nick didn't see eye to eye on anything anymore.

*Of course, I won't need to, because nothing is going to happen to you, right?*

Staring at the Hydra battering themselves against the shield an arm's length away, Nick nearly grinned. *We'll see. Will you open your inner shields to me?*

He felt the careful lowering of the shields around Phil's inner barriers – a gesture of trust between two men of very disparate strengths. With Phil's shields open to Nick, he was utterly vulnerable to an attack from the darker-Jewelled male, which was why this was rarely done, and only with someone utterly trusted.

Once inside Phil's personal shields, Nick could sense Phil's Rose shield – could feel the attacks of the Hydra trying to break through as though they were battering against him. If they got through, Phil and the landens and Nick's Queen would die.

And all this would happen over Nick's dead body.

He lifted his hands to the barrier between him and the Hydra, fingertips brushing the edge of the shield as he mentally plunged into the abyss, down to the inner web of Sapphire that represented his Jewelled strength.

As he turned just above the web of his core, Nick looked up at the Rose circle that was Phil's shield around the village. Within that circle gleamed a Rose star and a Summer-sky star, surrounded by the flitting shadows that were the landens of the village.

Beyond the edges of the circle, a thousand clear stars glimmered – the Hydra minds, neither Jewelled Blood, nor quite unJewelled, either. He used Phil's shield as the boundary line, grounding his power just outside that Rose-coloured line; then he punched his strength up, up, up, past the Summer-sky, Rose, and Tiger Eye; past the Yellow and the White, up, up, up into the Clear-Jewelled minds of the Hydra.

Minds shattered like little glass cups – too much untrammelled power pouring through them – and they died. One, ten, a hundred, ten hundred... Nick felt the rush of their deaths – their brief clutch at life before they were snuffed out like candles in a gale force wind, leaving only smoking ruins behind.

Nick opened his eyes, knowing what he would see.

A psychic attack manifested in the physical world, too – and a battlefield of corpses lay before him, the grass coated with their blood, lying where they'd fallen, bleeding from their mouths and nostrils, their eyes and ears.

Behind Nick someone – several someones – began vomiting.

He knew what he'd see when he turned. Fear in the eyes of the landen males. Fear in the eyes of his Queen.

It was an common reaction. Nick was a Warlord Prince of the Blood – a caste known for violence as much as for loyalty and fierce protectiveness. He was a Blood male who'd spent over half his life fighting the Hydra. This kind of death and destruction was one side of what he was.

To a light-Jewelled Queen, it would be a terrifying display of the power of a Sapphire-Jewelled Warlord Prince of the Blood. Not a male she would want anywhere near her, let alone serving in her court.

_Everything has a price._

It was an age-old saying among the Blood – particularly among males who served. But would his Queen's rejection be the price Nick paid for protecting her?

He swayed on his feet and nearly jerked away as an arm came around his back and a head ducked beneath his arm. For a moment his mind spun. Then she tilted her head up at him. "For a Warlord Prince who's supposed to be a warrior," she said, her voice brisk with temper, "what you really seem to need is a keeper."

Relief eased the pressure beneath his breastbone, made his knees weak and his tongue reckless. "Willing to take on the job, Lady?"

She paused at that. Behind him, he heard Phil turn a laugh into a cough and ignored it, focusing on her. She looked up at him with narrowed eyes as though only just realising what he was, what he was offering her.

Deciding.

"If I have to," she said at last.

_Good enough._ Nick allowed himself a smile. "You got a name?"

Her lips pressed together for a moment. "Maria," she said. "Maria Hill."

"Nick Fury." And the words hovered on his lips. _My life is in your service._

But now wasn't the time and here wasn't the place – not with the landens eyeing him warily, and her shoulders so slim and tense beneath his arm.

Still, as she turned her head to ask for water and somewhere for him to sit, Nick turned his head a little – just enough so he could inhale the rich psychic scent of a Queen who wasn't afraid of him or what he was.

_His_ Queen.

**tbc**


	2. The Widow's Question

**SUMMARY**: _She wasn't sure whether to offer – the girl hardly knew her, would be well within her rights to refuse._

**NOTES**:**dark-spiritwolf**? You were right, I did mess up Phil's Jewel. He wears the Rose, not the Tiger Eye. Although nice try at explaining it as Birthright vs. Jewel of Rank. :)

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 2: The Widow's Question**

There was a cleaning crew in the corridor leading towards the library, shifting debris out of the way.

Natasha was not exactly pleased by the signs of industriousness, but she kept the irritation off her face as she passed them in the corridor, nodding to the Warlords who were working with the group. More and more of these work crews had turned up at Aer Gerulus in the last few weeks. Mostly comprised of local townspeople, they'd been slowly working through the collective debris of twenty-plus years of abandonment.

In the last few weeks, since Fury and Phil had come home with an adolescent Queen in their wake, that work had sped up considerably.

Most of the community considered that a good thing.

Natasha wasn't so sure.

As she stalked down the corridor between the piles of old leaves and branches blown in by the wind, Natasha called to mind the first time she had seen this – not when Nick Fury had set up his base of operations in the abandoned estate, but back when Aer Gerulus had been the home of the Territory Queen and her court, some seventy years previous.

She'd been young and reckless, dared by one of the other kids to get into the Queen's Residence without being caught.

She'd planned it – oh so carefully – crossing this road here, untangling that security web there, falling in with a group of young aristos coming in from the gardens as though she belonged among them instead of the gutters from which her mentors had pulled her, or the shadows to where they'd consigned her. And when the aristos went into a room, she'd flung a sight-shield around herself and gone wandering.

The trick, as her instructors had taught her, was to look as though one belonged there – as though one had a right to be in any given place. Hide in plain sight; don't stand out.

Easier said than done when even the back corridors of Aer Gerulus gleamed with more artistry and care than the most elaborate of the receiving rooms of the dump in which Natasha was schooled.

Walking down those corridors now, her boots smearing the accumulated dust of years, Natasha shook her head at the temerity of the girl she'd been. Within moments of getting into the residence she'd been hopelessly lost. Footsteps and conversation had threatened at the next corner, and she'd pushed at the nearest door, seeking a room – anywhere – she could hide.

She pushed open the carved doors now, feeling the webs of spells shift at her touch to allow her passage. Although the room was illuminated along the far wall by floor-to-ceiling windows, she lit a ball of witchlight to guide her into the room, its radiance spilling across the dusty rugs and the aged wood of the bookshelves.

So far as Natasha could tell, when the court at Aer Gerulus dissolved, a Black Widow had sealed off the library and cast preservation spells to keep the books from rotting. The protection spells had been on the verge of dissolving when the community had settled here, but they'd had enough punch to claw at Natasha's shields before she used her skills in the Hourglass arts to key them to herself.

Since then, she'd come here at least once a week when she was at the residence, to read, to study, to browse, to relax.

Natasha let the door slip shut behind her, and inhaled the scent of book-dust with something like a sigh.

So, too, had she rested against the door as a young woman, awed by the sight of so many books all in one place. Her instructors had laughed at her thirsty mind, and done what they could to encourage it. _Your brain is the best weapon you will ever have._ But their resources were limited, and they didn't know what they didn't know.

Standing here all those years ago, though, Natasha had looked into the face of possibility and thrilled to the challenge.

She hadn't even noticed the librarian, sitting over on the couch by the window, her hair white as blanketing snow, her eyes as blue as the sky outside the windows in the now and not in the past in her mind.

As blue as the sky silhouetting the slim figure who'd frozen in the act of turning the page, the morning light casting blue shadows on her dark hair.

Natasha called in the stiletto without thinking. Then she silently cursed and vanished it again.

They stared at each other for a moment, Black Widow to Queen. Then Maria winced. "Lady Romanoff."

"Lady Hill." Natasha eyed the adolescent witch and kept her voice even and civil. "Aren't you usually at morning training at this time?"

"I'm taking a day off," Maria said, her eyes never wavering from Natasha's face. "Or a few. That's allowed." Then, quickly, "I thought I'd find something to read."

Something was nagging at Natasha's thoughts, but she couldn't formulate it under the steady study of those eyes. To give the girl her due, she had presence. Natasha had been trained to think, to formulate, to plan in all situations and circumstances. But she'd never faced anyone so young with so much composure – not anyone her instructors hadn't trained.

She managed a response.

"There's plenty of that here. Assuming your taste runs to books written thirty to a hundred years ago, that is."

The young witch shrugged and looked down at the book she'd been reading, lying on top of an old, ragged quilt that had surely seen better days. It might have been seen as a submissive gesture. Only the girl was a Queen, and Natasha had the feeling the girl wasn't avoiding her gaze so much as considering how much she could say to a stranger.

For the last few weeks, the girl had drifted in and out of the community, turning up for mealtimes and morning training, rebuffing most attempts at conversation, and watching everything with large, wary eyes. Nick might have brought the young witch back to be Queen, but the girl certainly wasn't acting as though she wanted anything to do with the males who made up the rough community of fighters.

Had Nick even given the girl the choice of coming? Nick was a Warlord Prince, and they were intimidating at the best of times. It was possible the girl had been coerced into coming to Aer Gerulus. She was young, she'd been living alone with no-one for company but landens; it was possible she'd thought that a Blood community would be better than nothing and was now regretting it.

Natasha crouched down beside the couch, intending to ask the girl if she wanted someone to talk to, to determine if the child really wanted to be here or just had nowhere else to go.

And paused.

This close, the psychic scent wound around her, unmistakeable: _Moon's blood._

Maria twitched, and her expression grew subtly defiant as Natasha looked up at her.

Three days out of every month, during her moontime, a Jewelled witch had to drain her power into her Jewels. During that time she could do nothing more than the most basic of Craft without extreme agony, leaving her vulnerable to attack from enemies. In most Blood communities, a witch made sure she spent those days among people she trusted – family or close friends.

Here, in Aer Gerulus, Natasha kept to her rooms and let Clint and Phil fuss, while Nick 'kept an eye on the situation'. But it had taken her nearly six months before she'd trusted them enough to stay in camp during her moontimes.

No wonder Maria was here in the library instead of her rooms.

"Are you going to tell Clint?"

"That depends," Natasha said, both amused and irritated that the girl had picked up on her relationship with Clint, and the assumption that Clint would claim the right to fuss – which he would. "Were you planning to stay here for the next three days?"

"They'd come looking for me anyway."

"And what do you think would happen when they found you?" Natasha let that question hang in the air. Maria winced. "You're better off facing them now, before they get worried."

"Maybe."

The reserve was still there and Natasha felt almost compelled to reassure her. "You can trust them, you know."

"I know."

It wasn't just a response; Natasha felt the assurance in the young woman's voice. She tilted her head, puzzled. If it wasn't about trust, why was she so reluctant to integrate into the community?

"After the Scarlet Purges, you travelled all over the realms," the young Queen ventured.

"Yes."

"How many Queens did you meet along the way?"

Natasha stared, taken aback. Of all the questions she'd expected, that wasn't one she'd expected the girl to ask. "A few. Not many." Not as many as she'd seen before the Purges, back when the Territory had been rich in Queens and thriving under their care.

Maria tugged the quilt more closely around her. "Were they good Queens?"

"I suppose." Natasha had never thought about it. "I didn't stay very long in any one place. Why?"

The wide mouth tilted at the corner, a little sadly? Wistfully? Natasha wasn't sure and didn't yet know Maria well enough to tell.

"A good Queen doesn't just collect a court of males around her; she looks after them, too. She has a responsibility to her males as much as they do to her."

_Ah._ Not a lack of trust or a fear for her safety, then; something else instead. A fear of not being good _enough_.

Natasha might have laughed, except for the seriousness of the old mind hiding behind the youthful features. In the present state of the Territory, after years without a Queen strong enough to anchor them, many males would have accepted any Queen – even a bad one. Maybe a few would have held out for a Queen who held their honour as high they did hers, but it would have been precious few.

A Queen who fretted about being good enough? Who held off from the males because she wasn't sure she could give them what they needed? Who protected a landen village instead of running to save her own skin, and recognised and handled a Warlord Prince's protectiveness?

Phil had told Natasha and Clint of the attack against the village, sparing nothing in the telling – not even Maria's reluctance to leave with them.

_In the end, she left because staying would have put the landens at risk of another attack. It had nothing to do with us. Well, almost nothing._

Natasha considered the girl sitting in front of her, her hands suddenly clenched tight on the patchwork quilt. In pain, then, but unwilling to let it show. "Have you seen a good Queen's court?"

"Yes." After a moment, Maria shrugged. "I grew up in a court."

When it became clear she wasn't going to say which court, Natasha didn't question further. Instead, she fell back on protocol. "Then you know that it's the males' right to fuss when a Queen has her moontime."

Maria looked sour. "Only the First Circle."

"So who do you think gets First Circle rights here?" Natasha the young woman flush.

"I'm not—"

"If you didn't want to be a Queen, you shouldn't have come back with Fury and Phil."

Silence. Silence for a long time, during which Maria stared fixedly at her hands. Then, finally, "I don't want to fail them. I don't want to see them die."

"Maybe you won't."

"Have you looked out there? There's a war on!"

Tempted to snap that she'd seen much more of the war than this child ever had, Natasha held her tongue. She remembered being that young and scared when her certainties were gone. When she spoke, her voice was carefully even with the control of many years' experience.

"Why did you come here, then?"

"I couldn't stay where I was."

"But you won't be the Queen the males need?" Natasha let the question hang in the air between them. Then she softened a little. "You're allowed to be scared."

"I dreamed of a hole in the realms," Maria said at last. "An army of death and walking in the Twisted Kingdom. It wasn't a tangled web, just a dream. But it felt true."

"If those were my dreams, I'd be scared, too," Natasha admitted, wondering how much the child knew about tangled webs and visions. Something prodded at her thoughts again. "But you can't let your fear freeze you. You have to keep moving."

"Being scared shouldn't be an excuse."

"No."

"Can we limit it to Phil and Clint?"

Natasha eyed the younger witch. "You're not intimidated by Nick."

"No." Maria grimaced as she drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees. "But he'll fuss the worst. And because he's the leader, everyone else will take his cue."

Natasha turned her laugh into a cough at the astute observation. "One of the disadvantages of having a dark-Jewelled Warlord Prince in your court."

"I guess I can't give him back?"

"I don't think that's how it works."

Maria opened her mouth to say something – before the colour drained from her face. She made a noise like a squeak and curled up over her knees in obvious pain. Natasha caught her breath and took a step forward before she stopped herself. The Queen had no reason to trust her – and she'd shown herself wary to everyone else in the residence, so why should she allow herself to be touched by a witch whose natural inclinations were to mind-webs and poisons? *Clint!*

*Tasha?*

*I'm with Maria in the library.* She sent him the route in her head, silently acknowledging that her refuge was about to become public space. *It's her moontime.* His temper sharpened.

*And she didn't—? Never mind. I'm on my way.*

*Tell Phil.*

*And let him tell Nick?* Amusement coloured the psychic thread between them. *Bad girl, Tasha.*

Maria was taking long, measured breaths, like someone forcing herself through the pain. Natasha hoped she wasn't overstepping and gripped the girl's shoulder, giving her something else to focus on. "Are they usually this bad?"

"The last few."

"I..." She wasn't sure whether to offer – the girl hardly knew her, would be well within her rights to refuse. "I know how to make a soothing brew for moontimes if you like."

The dark head lifted. "Please."

"And you'll let the males fuss?"

"About as much as you will when your moontime comes."

Natasha smiled, acknowledging the hit. "You get to remind me in a week's time, then."

One corner of the wide mouth tilted up. "You have a deal."

**tbc**


	3. No Solutions

**SUMMARY**: _And then Clint remembered he was one dressing gown away from naked. _

**NOTES**: I'm hoping to be able to write the story of how Clint and Natasha got together in this universe. We'll see how this universe is taken and whether I think it's worth my while.

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 3: No Solutions**

Clint's instructions had been to get the Lady out of the residence so the household staff could move her into the Queen's rooms, determine her skill at hunting and hiding out on the land, and see if he couldn't persuade her to be a little more forthcoming about her past

As Fury put it, "_She's been here nearly four months. Get her to open up about her time in the forest – and before that, if you can._"

So far, Maria had been close-mouthed about how she came to be in the forest, only mentioning that she'd been there for a number of years.

It burned Clint's blood to think of people – Blood – leaving an adolescent girl to fend for herself, out on the edges of the Blood society.

They left at daybreak, and returned at sunset.

The new rooms were received with quiet delight – her own workroom, her own library, her own door to the garden. She even smiled as she trailed her fingers across the spines of the books they'd brought in from the library to fill her bookcase – a slow, peeping curve of pleasure that sparked something warm in Clint's belly.

She didn't hug them, or do more than say thank you; but her pleasure was palpable, and that was enough for the moment.

"Nick's gone out to the town," Phil said when they left Maria to clean up for dinner. "He said he'll be late – a meeting in town with more complaints about the warriors."

"They haven't been badly-behaved, have they?"

"No. But the daughters of the townspeople take great interest in the well-built young males who occasionally come into town to spend a little of their money. And the merchants and aristos object to this." The sardonic smile of the older male said a great deal about the townspeople who had their fletching in a flutter.

"And what, exactly, do they expect Fury to do about it since it's not a discipline problem?"

"They're townspeople," Phil said with sardonic understatement. "It's hard to tell."

"They're idiots."

Clint still remembered the last meeting they'd had with the merchants a year ago, when they'd gone back to request the traditional tithe from the town to the Queen and her court – for the nurturing and protection of the land.

The head of the Brewer's Guild – a lean whipcord of a man who'd looked almost the match for Nick – had told the Residence representatives that the warriors could sit in the Queen's residence and say they had the right to collect tithes, but there was no Queen in the residence, feeding the land. The Hydra hadn't attacked here in twenty years, and without a Queen they weren't likely to, neither. The town of Aer Gerulus would hold its independence from the residence.

He hadn't quite called the warriors 'brainless, muscle-bound dicks', but Clint thought it'd been close.

After that, the warriors who moved in and out of the residence on rotation from the camps went into the town to spend their wages, but the personnel permanently stationed in the residence opted not to spend what they had on anything more than the basics.

"Fury figured he'd go and make an appearance anyway." Phil gave him a sideways glance as they headed towards Clint's rooms. "You look like you've had a long day."

"Something like that." Clint shook his head. "She pretty much ran me ragged."

"Not surprising, considering she'd been living in that cottage for several years. Did you find out why?"

"No. She keeps her secrets like a miser."

"Protecting people who didn't even look after her." Phil muttered. "She lets us in, but she doesn't trust us."

"Tasha says she's warming to the idea of having a court."

"She's a Queen. Having a court should come as naturally as breathing." Phil held up a hand with a rueful smile. "I'm repeating myself. I know. Go get cleaned up and I'll see you at dinner."

Clint grinned, and went to get cleaned up.

He'd just gotten out of the shower, wrapped a towel around his hips, and was contemplating skipping dinner when there was a knock on the door.

A quick psychic probe showed only one of the maids, and he dropped the shields and opened the door.

Natasha balanced a tray in one hand while the other held a small crossbow pointed at his balls. "You're not using the spells I gave you against coercion and illusion, Clint."

"I wasn't expecting to be ambushed in my rooms." Clint stepped back, holding the door open as she walked in, vanishing the crossbow, and putting the tray down on the table in the sitting room. "And couldn't you have waited until I was dressed?"

The look she gave him was plain enough and the heated kiss she gave him even plainer. But when he leaned in and she leaned back, it seemed seduction wasn't on her mind.

"I figured you wouldn't want to be in court dinner after keeping up with Maria the whole day."

"Good call. Someone taught her to hunt. Not just game – people." Clint blew a long breath out. That had been a shock – to have her come up behind him and poke him in the back with a stick. "She got the jump on me the first time. After that, I kept an eye out. But she was taught how to track people with darker Jewels – and probably how to bring them down, too."

"She was given good training." Natasha lifted the covers on the food. "Court protocol, survival, hunting, the Hourglass arts..."

In middle of putting on a dressing gown, Clint paused. "The Hourglass? She's a Black Widow Queen?"

He knew Natasha had been working with Maria in the area of Craft and spells, but he didn't think they'd been going through the Black Widow training just yet.

"The arts of the Hourglass can be learned by any of the Blood, Clint, not just Black Widows. We have a natural advantage because of our caste; but it's not unknown for witches from other castes to also get training in the Hourglass. Or it wasn't. Here." She passed him a plate of stew – meaty bones and thick broth.

The meal wasn't fancy, but their first shared meal had been rabbit spitted over a forest fire, each wary and watchful of the unknown other. Clint had known perfectly well that the beautiful woman sitting across from him was death, but he'd been young and brash and immortal in his own head. And although she hadn't smiled when he'd told her it was cold and they should share bedrolls, she hadn't gutted him for insolence either.

_When you're older, maybe._

He'd been pragmatic enough to think of it as sop, not a promise. A witch like that would find a male – or a dozen – willing to warm her bed long before Clint became old enough to be more than an over-eager puppy between her thighs.

To say she'd surprised him was an understatement.

"When did you realise she'd been trained in the Hourglass?"

Natasha ran her finger along the bone, neatly stripping it of meat. "After her first moontime in the library." She sucked on a fingertip for a moment. "The tangled webs surrounding that library that should have torn her mind out, Clint. I had to take them down so you and Phil and Nick could come in, but she was already there when I walked in. And the protections were untouched so far as I could see."

"Keyed to her?"

"How? The residence was abandoned back when the then-court fell, and that was before she was born."

Clint spooned up his food and asked a question he'd had in the back of his mind for some time now. "Did the Black Widows see what would happen to SHIELD Territory?"

"I don't know," she said. "I've never asked any of them."

"But?"

"I think they saw it." Natasha dipped a hunk of meat in the sauce on her plate. Tucked it into her mouth. Chewed thoughtfully. "Someone groomed her to rule – and not just a village or a town, but a Province or a Territory. Her training's too thorough, her knowledge too complete for a sixteen year-old Queen who's been living in the forest for a couple of years..."

"Whoever mentored her was teaching these things to a witch who was barely out of childhood."

"Yes."

"And just left her out there to survive?"

"It's not unknown."

He watched the wary stillness of the pale jaw behind the corkscrew curls that slid across her cheekbone like a veil. Her own training had started in childhood: moving stealthily, learning to kill – with weapons and with jewels. And, like Maria, she'd been abandoned at a relatively young age.

"Is it possible the people who trained you also trained her?"

"No. My trainers and mentors are dead."

"Some of the dead can still teach and train," Clint reminded her. The Blood were more than merely flesh; the power that resided in them could last on beyond the death of the body. Called the demon-dead, most were simply the people they'd been in life, only their bodies no longer healed naturally. The regular drinking of blood – mostly animal although a little human – prevented them from rotting, and they could fight and think, work and play, learn and teach, before their power faded and they became no more than a whisper in the Darkness.

"These ones can't," Natasha murmured. "The executioners would have finished the kill, ensured they couldn't become demon-dead. And they didn't know anything about ruling and management of a court. Only how to kill."

"Well, someone taught her how to hunt males. Someone who thought she'd someday need that skill."

"I'd have thought you'd be glad someone had taught her how to protect herself."

"Oh, I'm glad of it. Just...disturbed, too."

"What did she do today?"

Clint shrugged and put the plate down on the side table, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees. "We started out trapping – snares and such. Moved onto hunting when we found a herd of fallow deer. Then I suggested we try tracking instead. I'd get a five minute head start, and she'd try to track me."

"And she surprised you."

"To say the least." He'd nearly put a psychic bolt through her shields, he was that startled. After that, he paid attention and she didn't get past him again. But Clint had been assuming she was a novice, and the realisation that she wasn't changed the playing field.

"How would you judge her style?"

"Direct. She prefers blunt force to cunning, but I have the feeling she could use cunning if she thought it was needed. She knows the subterfuges, but she doesn't use them to their full potential – like your psychic tripwires? The ones that send a specific message? She had those down pat, but they gave off this psychic resonance that _jangled_..."

Natasha grinned as she settled back with a cup of wine. "Unnerving?"

"It was like getting squeezed through a psychic sieve."

"Poetic."

"Painful." But he'd got the drop on Maria, too, as he crumpled and she ran in to help._ Never assume your target is helpless._

"She'll be a good Queen when she gets there," Natasha murmured when he told her how Maria had thought he was in pain and run to him.

"She's a good Queen now."

"Then she'll be a _very_ good Queen when she gets past the fear of failing her court."

"And if she doesn't?"

"She'll still be a very good Queen." She tilted her head with a faint smile. "Lucky for you."

"Lucky for all of us," Clint murmured.

The Scarlet Purges had been brutal on the Blood back in the earliest days of the war. The Hydra had targeted the Queens and Black Widows and all dark-Jewelled females, spending dozens of warriors in the effort to cut the heart out of the Blood.

They'd succeeded.

The Territory Queen of the time had escaped with her First Circle, but the slaughter had been unexpected and horrific. Province Queens, District Queens, village Queens overcome by the Hydra, killed, broken, and twisted by the spells the Hydra had wielded against them.

Without the Queens, the social structure of the Blood collapsed. Without strong Queens and dark-Jewelled witches to anchor the darker-Jewelled males, the Warlord Princes turned savage. The Princes and Warlords had struggled but held together, and here and there a Queen had risen high enough for long enough to gather a court and anchor the males and the land.

Clint didn't remember those years – he'd been born a few years after the Scarlet Purges began, orphaned by the time he was five and living off the streets with the other children. But he'd heard of the Phoenix Court – it had been on everyone's lips at the time: a Province Queen, red-haired, green-eyed, dark-Jewelled and strong-willed, with a powerful triangle of males around her.

Lady Jean Grey had risen to power ten years after the Scarlet Purges, and her court had held onto power for twelve before being betrayed from the inside. Nobody knew the truth of what had happened – at least, nobody who was willing to say – but there were rumours about her walking the Twisted Kingdom, about a betrayal so deep that it had rent the court apart.

There were still some Queens in the villages, but none with the strength of Jewel or character to form courts capable of holding the Territory against the Hydra.

Not until Phil had found Maria.

But as long as the Hydra attacked the land, they'd never have peace.

"The problem isn't the lack of Queens," he said, more to himself than to Natasha. "The problem is the Hydra. And we don't have a solution for them."

"Not yet," she said, and her voice trembled with something more.

"What is it?" She was a Black Widow by nature and training; born to look between the mists and veils of the realms and into the Twisted Kingdom, the edges of madness. "Have you seen something?"

Her eyes went distant, her voice resonant. "A Blood male begging for death." Natasha shivered. "A Prince who isn't a Prince, and a Red Jewel carved into a skull. A Warlord Prince without a home and a hole in the realm...and a hand around her throat, squeezing— NO!"

Clint caught her as she erupted out of the chair, fighting a vision that hadn't happened yet. "Tasha!"

Her nails dug into his wrists as he held onto her shoulders, his grip hard to reassure her of where she was. He felt the press of her snake tooth – a Black Widow's sting beneath the nail of her little finger – and knew fear before she retracted it. The veil across her pupils dropped and she looked at him, saw him, knew him.

"Hey." After a moment, she relaxed into his grip. "What did you see?"

Natasha shivered as she looked into his eyes, her chest rising and falling with short breaths. "I'm not sure. The future, I think."

"Maria's future?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I'd have to weave—"

"Not tonight." Clint caught her shoulders, turning her back to him, anchoring her. "Not like this."

His motives were innocent enough. Tangled webs took on the mindset of the weaver, and in the state Natasha was in, she'd see the worst of possible futures. But as she looked down at him, he remembered he was one dressing gown away from naked.

Blue eyes kindled and her mouth curved, and Clint felt himself respond to her desire.

"No," Natasha agreed with a faint purr in her voice. "Another time."

**tbc**


	4. Stomping On Sleeping Dragons

**SUMMARY**: _Maria was his Queen, and if she wanted some time to herself, then he would do whatever he had to do to get her that time. _

**NOTES**: This is a crossover with Anne Bishop's Black Jewels universe. A primer to the realms can be found here ( . ) if you wish for more information about it. Hope it helps!

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 4: Stomping on Sleeping Dragons**

One hour into the trip to town, Phil realised just how optimistic he'd been to think that he'd get anything done today at all.

The theory had been simple enough: bring Maria into town to get her the better part of a new wardrobe. While she was happy to weapons train and garden and take her lessons in any old thing, Nick had finally decided that enough was enough and if she was going to be a Queen then she was going to dress the part – at dinner, if never else.

In practice...

It had been a long time since the townspeople had seen a Queen, and when one appeared in their midst, they weren't behindhand about coming to have a look at her.

There wasn't any gawking – at least not from the adults. However, within moments of going into any shop or business, the shop was crowded with people who were 'just' coming in to have a look at whatever wares were being sold.

*This isn't going to work, Phil,* Natasha advised as they came out of yet another too-crowded shop. *It's as bad as when she arrived at the residence – only worse, because back then you and Nick could hide her away and reassure them that she wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.*

*So I should give up on the new wardrobe?*

*Nick will survive not seeing her in dinner dress for a few weeks longer,* Natasha said dryly. *It's been so long since there's been a Queen around the town that even asking politely isn't going to move some of these people – the darker-Jewelled males in particular. Short of bringing Nick out to glower at them, I think we're going to have to consider this trip a loss in terms of what we planned to do.*

"The shops seem to be doing good business," Maria commented as they walked down the road, unaware of the private psychic conversation between Phil and Natasha. "But is it usual for that many males to be in a women's clothing shop, or are there local dress codes of which I'm unaware?"

The sardonic note in her voice nearly stopped Phil on the street.

"No," he said. She was his Queen and an intelligent young woman; there was no point in hiding it from her, and she had a right to say what she wanted – or didn't want – to do. "You're right. Those males wouldn't usually been seen in such shops."

"So they're coming out to see me."

"So it seems."

Maria paused as her escort gathered around her. "I would like to take a look in the bookshop," she said after a moment. "But we can go to a coffee shop or the park or something if you think people need to see me."

Like she was some kind of spectacle or curiosity.

Phil felt anger rise in him before he reined it in.

"You're not here for the townspeople to gawk at," he said, making a decision. Yes, Maria was a Queen and it had been years since there was a Queen in residence. But she was also _his_ Queen, and if she wanted some time to herself, then he would do whatever he had to do to get her that time. "If you want to go into the bookshop, we'll go to the bookshop. Clint can keep the townspeople out by looking intimidating."

"Wouldn't Clint have to actually _look_ intimidating for that to work?" A faint smile curled about Maria's lips.

"Oh, I keep my intimidating face for special occasions," Clint said, deadpan, as Natasha covered her laughter with a coughing fit.

"Of course you do. Forgive me for doubting, Lord Barton." The words were solemn, but the corners of Maria's mouth twitched.

The by-play warmed something in Phil's chest; loosening a tightness he hadn't even known was there until that moment.

"Helvan and Kiron aren't coming with us?" Maria asked as they paused on the stoop of the shop.

"I've sent them on to get us a table at the local tavern." And Clint and the two Warlords outside would make sure that Maria got at least a little time to do some browsing and shopping. Just because she was a Queen didn't mean she couldn't have time to herself.

Usually, everyone would have respected the Queen's personal time. Phil had been young before the Purges, but he remembered the Queen of his village going for a walk with her dogs and getting nothing more than greetings. But that had been back when Queens were, if not common, at least a regular sight.

It had been twenty five years since Lady Peggy's court had fallen – and the two successive Queens who'd tried to hold the Territory from the Residence had died only a few years later. After that, any Queen gathering a court about her stayed well away from the Residence in Aer Gerulus.

But however long it had been, Phil wasn't about to let them crowd Maria.

He expected her to make a dash inside, elated by the prospect of an uninterrupted moment. Instead, she touched him on the arm – a voluntary brush of fingertips that had nothing to do with Protocol or courtesy.

"Thank you."

It spun him around, dizzying, making his tongue thick and his thoughts foggy. "My life is in your service."

It was no less than the truth, and she'd just confirmed it by treating him – however unconsciously – as a male of her court. But it was a formal declaration from a male to his Queen – a statement of intent and commitment.

Maria didn't quite wince. But she looked deeply uncomfortable as she passed him and went into the shop.

Natasha paused on the door stoop. *I suppose that's one way of doing it.*

Phil caught Clint's half-smile before the door closed behind them with a jingle of bells. The shopkeeper hustled out of the back of the shop, a grin pasted on his face that faltered when he realised he had a Queen in his bookshop.

"And how might I help you today, my Lady?"

"We're just looking," Maria said.

"By all means – by all means! Is there anything that you're particularly interested in? So I might direct you to your pleasure? Novels? Biographies? Non-fiction?"

"I...haven't really had time to read anything for a while," she said with a quick glance at Phil. "The last book I read was about a Black Widow who was born in a village, and got called to the Queen's court to perform a service. And there was a Warlord Prince at the court who took an interest in her, but she had to defend herself and him against an attack and provided him with shields..."

The shopkeeper's expression brightened. "Ah, yes! _Widow's Pique_! That one is several years old now – there are sequels, you know..."

"I didn't even manage to finish that one," she confessed. "I was in the middle of it, and then I...lost the book." The way she hurried over the words suggested something other than 'losing' the book. Phil made a note to find out what had happened to it. "So if you have it, I'd really like to read it again. And the sequels if you have them."

The man's grin nearly split his face as he waddled out and down along one of the rows of shelves. "If we don't, it's no trouble to order them in, Lady– I'm sorry, I didn't get your name..."

Maria hesitated and Phil stepped in. "Lady Hill."

"Of course! You'll enjoy them, I'm sure, Lady Hill. A great many customers did..."

Drifting through the shelves of the shop, Phil let his eyes play across the titles while he listened to Maria conversing with the shopkeeper, her stiff answers slowly easing into more comfortable conversations.

*It's good to see her relaxing,* Natasha said on a private thread, apparently flipping through a book of Revellan war-poetry. *That was a good decision – to give her some breathing space.*

*So glad you approve,* Phil said dryly.

*And glad you brought a decent wallet with you?*

*Considering that pile of books is still growing, yes.*

It seemed like Maria had bought out half the shop when she and the shopkeeper got back to the counter. Phil did a mental tally and sighed a little. Explaining this to Fury was going to be fun – the old man had opinions about the proper dress for dinner, and the realisation that the wardrobe funds had been raided to add to Maria's library was not going to go down well. Meanwhile, Clint was out in the street with his arms folded and a smirk playing on his lips and Natasha was grinning openly.

*You shut up,* he told them as the shopkeeper totted up the purchases.

And then Maria called in a worn leather purse. and began pulling out silver marks.

Phil gaped. _Where did she get_–_?_

Before the shopkeeper could react, Phil reached out and put a hand down over hers. "That won't be necessary. I've got this."

She looked at him with a startled and slightly wary expression. "They're my purchases."

"And I can cover them."

Her eyes studied the books on the bench as she pulled her hands and purse out from under his. "But you don't have to."

"Strangely, yes. I do."

The shopkeeper cleared his throat. "If I might make a suggestion, Lady, Prince? The books can go on an account. Towards the tithes."

The tithes that the town had refused to pay for the last two years, insulting Fury and the Residence with not just their rejection but their sneers.

Maria turned to Phil, surprised. "We receive tithes from the town?"

"No."

She frowned. "If we don't receive tithes, then they can't go on account."

"I didn't say they could." Phil kept his voice neutral – perhaps a little too neutral.

Perhaps he should have been a little less flat about it, but the merchants in the last meeting between Nick and the town had been insulting and smug, safe in their gamble that the town wouldn't need protection and so didn't need to pay tithes to the Warlord Prince in the residence.

Maria's smile dropped. The shopkeeper's smile wavered. Then Maria vanished her wallet, and her expression grew cool and mask-like. The change was abrupt and terrifying. An animated adolescent witch became an angry Queen with nothing more than a dropped smile.

"I see." She looked at the books and then at the shopkeeper. "I apologise for taking up your time, but I won't be taking those books after all."

"Lady—" The shopkeeper caught his breath as Clint pushed open the door, blue eyes icy. He'd felt the change in Maria's mood and come to see what was wrong – just the way any Warlord would when his Queen was disturbed.

"Is there a problem?"

"No, Lord Barton," Maria answered in those same cool, almost biting tones. "We were just leaving."

"Lady—Please..." The shopkeeper broke off as she turned back to look at him, slim and young and every inch a Queen.

"Yes?"

"If you won't take them on account, Lady, may I at least put them aside for you for later?"

For a moment, Phil wondered if she'd throw the offer back in the shopkeeper's face. All she had to say was 'no' and the man would be a wreck.

He wondered if he should say something.

But after a moment's hesitation, Maria nodded. "You may. Thank you for making the offer, and bringing this to my attention."

And then she was gone, accepting Clint's escort out the door.

Phil reassured Clint on a private thread that he and Natasha would be out in a minute, then waited until the door had closed before turning to the shopkeeper. "Might I suggest you speak with the town merchants about the tithing situation and arrange a meeting with Prince Fury?"

"I... Yes. Yes, we will. Prince, I would like to apologise—"

Phil cut off his obsequious pleas with one lifted finger. "It's not me you have to appease."

He offered his arm to escort Natasha out the door, and managed not to smile when she asked, "Isn't there a saying about not tickling sleeping dragons?"

"I don't think it was 'tickled' so much as 'stomped on'," Phil murmured with an amusement that rapidly faded as he took in the tableau outside.

Maria and Clint had stopped down the road, and Clint had the carefully wooden expression that meant he was also fighting a bout of temper – although probably not at Maria.

"And they just _decided_ they didn't need to pay tithes?"

"They didn't want to be beholden to us."

"That doesn't mean they could be rude!"

"Yeah, well, you might be surprised how many people think they can be rude just because they see themselves as superior to a bunch of upstart warriors."

*Mother Night,* Phil muttered as the air around them grew sharp and cold. Maybe sending Maria out with Clint had been a mistake. Warlords weren't as volatile as Warlord Princes, but they had pride and temper – and when it rode side-by-side with muscle, it was a lethal combination.

"They said that?"

"No," Phil interrupted, figuring it was time for some damage control – what little he could. "They implied it during the meeting we had with them when we first moved into the residence."

Her eyes narrowed. "I want to speak with Fury."

_Mother Night._ Phil figured it was time to head this off. "And you will – when we get back to the residence. We're on our way to the tavern, remember?"

She thought about that, looking down the street and then back towards the landing web and the coach station. "We could just collect Helvan and Kiron and go home," she suggested with wide-eyed ingenuity. "Then they'd _have_ to come to us instead."

*I like the way she thinks,* Clint murmured on a spear thread.

*You would,* Phil retorted. Natasha looked like she was caught between horror and the desire to laugh, although she couldn't have caught the exchange. "I think this one time, we'll sit and have a drink – or an age-appropriate beverage – and be polite."

"Polite?"

"Polite."

She didn't like it, but she acquiesced to the advice of a male in her court, held out her hand for him to fit his hand under in escort, and strode towards the tavern with the intensity of a warrior about to walk onto a battlefield.

And Phil thought – under very close psychic shields – that the Darkness would need to have mercy on the fool townspeople, because the Lady Maria Hill was showing little sign that she would.

**tbc**


	5. Unexpected

**SUMMARY**: ___Jane had never enjoyed the social gatherings in Aer Gerulus, even when her father was alive._

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 5: Underestimated**

Jane had never enjoyed the social gatherings in Aer Gerulus, even when her father was alive.

Now that he was dead, she would have avoided them entirely if not for Erik, who encouraged her to go to such parties and escorted her, even though she knew he liked them no better than she did.

"_A break from our work is beneficial,_" he would say. "_And you should really make friends your own age._"

The problem was that none of the young aristo witches her own age particularly wanted to be friends with Jane. Her family weren't important, her Jewels weren't dark, and she didn't have a caste. About the only thing Jane was good for in the minds of the aristo class of Aer Gerulus was breeding, and that would only be after her Virgin Night which was still a year or two away. All of which made her competition in the minds of most of the witches at these social gatherings, not companion.

Besides which, Jane didn't want to be friends with them, either.

Most were petty, small-minded, and uninterested in spells and potions and the things that Jane found so fascinating about being Blood. At least Darcy was a Priestess, and they could have interesting conversations about Darcy's training as well as discuss the latest gossip. But Darcy was working at a sanctuary halfway across the Territory, and Jane was stuck here in Aer Gerulus.

And as for the young Blood males strutting around such gatherings, the less said about them, the better – especially to Erik.

So far, Jane had managed to evade any attempts to corner her, but she was aware that at least one if not several of the males in her social circle considered her a challenge, and things would probably come to a head sooner or later. After which she really _would_ be unwelcome at these gatherings.

Tonight, at least, the party she was attending was enlivened by the appearance of the new Queen who was living over in the residence. Well, the Queen and the six males who'd accompanied her, from the older Warlord Prince who strode into the room like he owned it, to the stocky younger male whom the gaggle of witches nearest Jane pronounced 'delicious' behind their hands before daring each other to flirt with him.

Given the way he and the lovely redhead from the Queen's party kept an eye on each other, Jane imagined flirting was about all these girls would get from him.

She let herself be introduced to the Queen – Maria – and her escort, and was surprised to realise that the Queen whose presence had set the town abuzz was even younger than Jane. Lady Hill said something inane, Jane said something back equally inane, and then someone else shouldered their way into the conversation and Jane dropped back. The Lady had more than enough people clamouring for her attention.

Instead, Jane entertained herself by watching how the Queen's party interacted with the local aristos: a little cool, a little sardonic, and managing to do polished politeness _and_ pointed abrasion together – sometimes in the same sentence.

Of course, because she was watching the Queen's party, she wasn't really paying attention to the others in the room. So when she found herself whisked out a balcony door into the warm, dark night, she wasn't prepared enough to do more than catch her breath before a hand covered her mouth and she was shoved back against a wall hard enough to see stars.

"Now," said Lord Nigel Ambrose with an unpleasant smile, "You aren't going to scream or call for help – you can't anyway, because I've surrounded us with a Summer-sky shield. What you are going to do is kiss me back and enjoy it – or, if you're too frigid to do that, at least pretend you're enjoying it so I get a little pleasure out of– YEAAGH!"

Jane had reached low, gripped and twisted. If she had to twist his balls off, then so be it, but she was _not_ going to kiss the miserable excuse for a Blood male, no matter what kind of reparation his family demanded from her.

She shoved him away, her heart pounding, her breath short – not with excitement but with stress and strain. "You are _never_ going to even _try_ that again," she hissed and called in the knife she'd taken to keeping on her at all times. "I'll see you shaved before I sully myself with a kiss from you!"

"You bitch!" He snarled, still half-crouched over and panting from his 'injury'. "Let's see if you're so proud after I—"

In an instant, the temperature dropped, and the words froze on his tongue. Jane gasped and saw it puff in the air, steaming white by the light of the gibbous moon.

"I hope you weren't about to say what I thought you were going to say." The words were calm and quiet, but something terrifying lingered beneath them as Lady Hill paused on the threshold of the balcony. "Because if you were, that would constitute a threat of rape. For which the punishment is to be decided by a tribunal of Queens. And I know what you're thinking," she continued in that same calm, quiet voice. "You're thinking that there's no tribunal of Queens anymore, so they couldn't possibly punish you."

"Lady—" Jane stopped as Lady Hill held up her hand to stop her protest.

A moment later that hand curled around a bladed stick, long and viciously elegant. It whistled softly through the still-freezing air as Lady Hill swung it towards Nigel, stopping just shy of his belly before dropping to point at his balls.

"As the Queen in residence at Aer Gerulus, I'd be happy to mete out the judgement and the justice," said Lady Hill. "Of course," she noted, "I've never shaved a man, so it could get messy. But that would be all part of the judgement. Did you have something to say?"

"I..." Nigel's eyes darted to the doors beyond as though hoping for a reprieve.

"Oh, they won't come out to see," Lady Hill was still talking in that quiet, low voice that was at once both soothing and deadly. "Because Lady Romanoff and Lord Barton are having a very public, very messy, very _fake_ fight inside right this moment. Lots of dramatics, and accusations of flirting and infidelity. You wouldn't believe how well Lord Barton sulks. The witches are all desperately hoping Clint will say he's had enough, and the males are all thinking that surely Natasha will need comforting after having her heart broken by a such reckless philanderer." She smiled sweetly. "So, did you have something to say, Lord Ambrose?"

Jane felt something dangerously like hysterics rising up within her. She swallowed it, siphoning off just a thread of power from her White Jewel to calm herself down.

"Lady Foster?"

She strove to be calm. It wasn't easy beneath those eyes. "I won't press charges this time."

"You should," the Lady said. "Because he'll only try this on another witch – one who doesn't carry a knife on her."

Yes, Jane had guessed that. And she'd prepared for it, too. "I won't press charges this time, in exchange for a drop of his blood."

Nigel squeaked, but Lady Hill just arched one brow. "Just a drop?"

"Just a drop."

Lady Hill eyed her for a long quiet moment, before a smile spread across her face. "Lord Ambrose?"

"L...Lady?"

"A drop of blood in exchange for no rape charges being pressed, then?" When he hesitated, the Lady added, "It's more than you'd get from me."

Nigel took the exchange. But Jane saw the anger glimmer in his eyes as she sliced his hand – shallowly – with the knife. It changed to fear when Lady Hill stepped in, still holding the bladed stick with the familiarity of someone who knew how to use it to disembowel a man – and possibly had at some point in the past.

"Lord Ambrose."

He faced the Queen again, wary.

"I have my eye on you, which means my males will keep an eye on you, too. And if we hear any rumours... Just remember that they're less forgiving than I am."

The nod was curt, the bow barely civil.

Then he scarpered.

"Filth," was Lady Hill's comment as she vanished the blade. The temperature around them had warmed back up, no longer influenced by a Queen's biting anger. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. A little shaken," she admitted. Now that the confrontation was over and she wasn't being fuelled by anger, she felt a little wobbly. "I wasn't expecting him to get me like that."

"I wasn't expecting you to ask for his blood." Lady Hill eyed her. "Do you need to go back inside?"

"No," Jane said, squaring her shoulders. She was shaky but she wasn't helpless. "Thank you for your help."

Unexpectedly, the other witch grinned. "Thank you for the excuse. I was looking for a reason to get out of there anyway. And it feels like ages since I got to threaten anyone."

Jane couldn't help but stare, fascinated and horrified. "Who was the last person you threatened?"

"Seriously threatened? Phil. Prince Coulson," Maria added when Jane tried to match the name with the escort. Her brain didn't seem to be working too well right now.

"Why were you threatening Prince Coulson?"

"Because he was snooping around my house and I wanted him to go away. So I told him I'd gut him if he ever came back."

"And what did he do?"

"Oh, he just never went away." Lady Hill made a face. "How are you at climbing walls?"

Jane was beginning to think that she'd quite underestimated Lady Hill. This conversation was going _nowhere_ she would ever have expected! "I don't know. I've never tried it."

"Want to learn? The library in this house is on the next floor, and it's got a great collection of spellbooks..."

Five minutes later, Maria – it was impossible to think of her as 'Lady Hill' when she was showing you how to climb brick walls in an evening gown without ruining the gown – helped pull Jane over the window ledge of the library and lit a ball of witchlight to illuminate the room.

"Aren't your escort going to come looking for you?" Jane asked as she brushed off her skirts which were surprisingly less dirty than she'd expected.

"Probably." Maria smiled. "But by then, I'll have gotten a look at the library..."

There was a lot of library to see, and Jane was soon pulling interesting books off the shelves and flipping through them. "How did you know they had a library here?" It was a public meeting hall rather than a private residence, and there was no reason to imagine that anyone had kept a repository of books here.

"Oh, I read about it somewhere. It's been here a long time." Maria looked up from a couple of slim tomes. "What's your interest?"

"Mostly matter transformation, movement, and realignment spells."

"Do you have a workroom?"

"My father's..." Jane hesitated. "I guess it's mine now." It was still hard to think of it as her own workroom and not her father's.

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, it was several years ago."

"That doesn't mean you don't miss him."

"Do you have family...? I'm sorry," she said, suddenly recalling herself. "That was rude."

"My mother died giving birth to me," Maria said, matter-of-factly. "And my father didn't want any reminders of her."

"He abandoned you?" The rumours went that she'd grown up wild, but Jane couldn't believe it – Maria's manners were impeccable and she'd seemed very elegant and controlled all evening – at least until Nigel had started forcing himself on Jane. It just didn't seem possible that she'd been abandoned.

"Not quite," Maria's expression was careful. "But a local Queen adopted me, and I was brought up in her court. They were more my family than my father ever was."

"And you miss them," Jane said, latching onto the safer topic. "The Queen and her family?"

"Yes." Maria looked her in the eye. "You don't stop missing them, I think. You just...get used to the ache."

"To working around the hole." Jane nodded in understanding. "Sometimes I can hear what my father would say when I'm working on a spell."

"So what would he say if he knew you were working on a tangled web?"

Jane stared, astonished. "How did you know?"

"After the blooded knife? It's obvious."

"Have you... Have you trained with the Hourglass?" It was possible for a witch to be of more than one caste, although it was rare. Maria was obviously a Queen, her psychic scent proclaiming her caste to anyone with an ounce of psychic sensitivity. If she was a natural Black Widow then that was less obvious; although it was possible that she was simply in training with Lady Romanoff...

"No," Maria said. "But I know a little about tangled webs. There was a Black Widow in the court I grew up in, and she taught me little bits of her craft, even if she said I'd be better off learning lessons other than hers."

Jane dragged her thoughts together. "What are you going to do? About the knowledge, I mean."

"I was calling for him to be shaved," Maria said dryly. "I'm not in a position to tell you not to use his blood in a tangled web."

"But?"

"But I'm going to advise – as one Sister to another – that you should be careful. And," she added after a moment, "to ask if you would like some help."

Help? Jane was surprised. Wouldn't Maria have far more important things to do as a Queen than help a minor aristo witch finish a tangled web to mete out a little justice on a Warlord who didn't understand the meaning of 'no'?

*Jane?* Erik sounded worried. *Where are you?*

*In the library upstairs.* _With the Queen._

*There's a library here? I didn't know that...* Erik sounded interested, and Jane grinned.

"I'm guessing you've just been missed?" Maria asked with a smile, vanishing the books in her hands. "My escort are threatening to come and fetch me if I don't go back to the meeting room."

"But you're the Queen."

"Maybe you can remind them of that." Maria rolled her eyes. "We'd better go. Nick says he'll haul me off over his shoulder if I'm not down in the next five minutes."

Jane could imagine. Warlord Princes were a law unto themselves, especially when they'd found a Queen they wanted to serve or a female to anchor them, and Prince Fury had seemed daunting enough in personality, never mind his caste or Jewel strength.

They were at the door before Jane found the courage to catch Maria's arm. "Would you like to come over some time? I mean, you're probably busy with all kinds of social engagements and Queen-type things but... The workroom was built for two, and I would like help. If you like."

Astonishment eased into a smile. "I'd like that very much. If you don't mind—"

"I wouldn't have invited you if I did mind."

"Well, then." Maria looped her arm into Jane's, "I'd love to."

Even the light scolding she got from Erik for running away from the party couldn't diminish her pleasure for the rest of the night.

**tbc**


	6. Chapter 6

**SUMMARY**: _Rhodey wouldn't let himself think about that. Wouldn't let himself remember failure._

**NOTES**: I apologise for the delay in posting again - my computer crashed and I didn't have a backup. Of anything. (Remember, kids, always back up your computer!) I got the contents of the HD back though, finally, and have a temporary computer to work with, so things should go pretty smoothly on from here. And we're just in time for some major story arc. Hope you enjoy it! T.

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 6: Trust And Service**

Rhodey didn't shield from the wind as he stood up on the hilltop outpost that watched over the training camp below. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and let the chill air bite into his flesh and bones, deep into his soul.

There was snow on the breeze – not yet here but close, fluttering through the air in big white flakes that would settle thick on the ground in the camp and turn everything white. It would make the air cold and the paths slushy until someone put a binding spell on the major thoroughfares, and would cloak the weary desperation that had invaded the training camp these last six months leading up to Winsol.

No end to the war against the Hydra.

Thirteen days – the major celebration of the Blood, when they danced for the glory of all the Blood was meant to be – a time of hope and family and promise and laughter.

At least, a time that was supposed to be full of such things.

The last time he'd celebrated Winsol as it was intended to be, Rhodey hadn't yet made the Offering to the Darkness. He'd been youth enough to still play with his young cousins and little sister, but adult enough to be allowed to drink the small cup of hot-blooded rum that was to the glory of Witch, dreams made flesh.

Off to the side, damp gravel crunched. The sharp, edged scent of a Warlord Prince filled the air, a psychic scent as familiar to Rhodey as his own.

"Ugh. Snow. Just what we needed this Winsol."

"Pepper will love it."

"Yeah, well, she doesn't have to shovel it off the paths."

"Isn't that why she has you?"

Tony shrugged. "So she keeps telling me. I thought it was because I was good in bed."

"More than I needed to know."

"She also said you should come by if you're not being all leader-y and broody out here for Winsol."

"Pepper did not say that."

"Well, maybe not the part about asking you around. But 'leader-y and broody' were her exact words."

Rhodey thought but didn't say that 'broody' was something a man wasn't allowed to be around Pepper Potts – unless the male in question was Tony Stark, in which case he brooded nevertheless.

"Which day?"

"I think she said the third. She was quite insistent."

"I'll think about it." Rhodey had stayed at Stark Manor many times. He was welcome any time he cared to turn up on the doorstep – not just by Tony, but by the witch who ran Tony's household and life, and held his heart in her capable hands.

But he preferred not to celebrate Winsol. Too many bitter reminders of what had been and would never be again. It was hard to celebrate all that the Blood were meant to be when all Rhodey could see was the endless now of the war against the Hydra and death.

"Sir." The stockier of the young warriors manning the outpost was standing a few feet away, hovering with a message on his lips. "A contact from Prince Fury – there's a coach approaching with the last squad of warriors from the residence."

"Wonderful," Tony muttered. "We get the kids home in time for Winsol."

Rhodey shot him a look before looking at the messenger. The boy was nearly vibrating with excitement. "And?"

"They're bringing the Queen with them, sir!"

For a second, Rhodey thought he'd misheard. The sudden hot spike of Tony's temper and the pulsing flare of Red Jewelled power that came with it suggested otherwise. Still, he had to check. "The Queen? Fury's Queen? Out here?"

"That's what Prince Coulson said."

"Oh, Coulson's come to visit? Even better." Tony turned to Rhodey. "I'm going out to the Western border to see if there are any small furry creatures hiding under rocks. Kick over a few trees, that sort of thing."

"While you're out there, let Murdock know his squad will be replaced before Winsol." Accustomed to both Tony's whims and his sense of humour, and familiar with his history, Rhodey didn't question his friend's decision. It helped that Tony outranked him, both as a Warlord Prince, and as a male who wore a Red Jewel.

Even if that Jewel was no longer actually coloured Red.

"Wants to spend Winsol with his assassin?"

"You want to spend it with your hearth-witch." Rhodey had never questioned Tony's attachment to Pepper, although others had wondered why a Dark-Jewelled Warlord Prince would be interested in a Rose-Jewelled hearth-witch of no family and no money. "Hey, Tony? Be careful."

Tony smiled – a faint, bitter smile quite unlike the cocky, devil-may-care grins he'd given once upon a time. "You, too."

Rhodey didn't wait to watch Tony leap for the Winds, but dismissed the messenger, and began picking his way down the steep incline towards the camp below, thinking furiously.

What had possessed Fury to send the Queen along? An adolescent witch – an adolescent _Queen_ – in a warrior's camp, walking among males who hadn't seen a Queen in years, if not decades. And right before the Winsol dispersi—

He suddenly saw Fury's plan. The cunning old fox!

Outrage warred with amusement, but both were fruitless when dealing with a Warlord Prince of Fury's age and authority. He let it go.

By the time he reached the camp, the carriage was just rumbling along the access road, and Rhodey's aides came running up, full of reports and news. He cut them off. "Get the men into inspection formation. And have the Warlords report to me."

He met the coachman's eye and nodded. "Good trip?"

"Good enough. The weather's turning."

"If you've got time, take a meal in the mess tent and a rest before you have to go. My aides will show you the way." Rhodey strode over to the door of the carriage. It opened as he reached it, and he put out a hand to help her down.

She was taller than he'd thought.

He was used to thinking of Fury's little Queen as actually 'little' since that was how the warriors rotated in from the residence tended to refer to her. As a result, the tall, slim witch with the speaking eyes was a surprise. So was the fact that, beneath the blue woollen coat she wore, she was dressed in warrior's garb – leather trousers, vest, boots and gloves – and turned to face him with the light-footed, battle-ready stance of a warrior.

Then there was the fact that she was Rhodey's Queen.

He felt the tug of recognition like a punch in the gut, rendering his courtesies mute.

"Lord Rhodes," said her escort – Prince Coulson. Behind him, Barton was surveying the camp with the eyes of a man who would be dangerous no matter his caste or what Jewels he wore, while the returning squadron disembarked and headed off to their quarters.

No Fury, thank the Darkness. Rhodey didn't need Nick Fury looming over his shoulder while he came to grips with the Queen – _his_ Queen.

Mother Night and may the Darkness be merciful.

"Prince Coulson." Rhodey resorted to the formalities – something to ground him, keep him from babbling. He was a mature Warlord in his prime, not some adolescent idiot. "Lady Hill? Welcome to the training camps."

Lady Hill looked around her with bright, interested eyes – meeting gazes, surveying the camp with a judicious eye before turning back to Rhodey. "Lord Rhodes. We apologise for the unexpected visit, but Prince Fury thought I should be informed about the war against the Hydra."

Rhodey considered what he knew of Fury, of the Warlord Prince's temper and protectiveness, considered what he'd have done if his Queen had needed informing about the war. And wondered if the old man was out of his mind.

"He suggested you come out here?"

"No." Her smile glittered, suddenly nothing more than a young and mischievous witch tweaking an older male's nose. "But it's a practical place to start."

*And Fury didn't object?* Rhodey asked Barton on a Purple-Dusk spear thread. *I'm surprised.*

*Probably not as surprised as Fury when he went up against Maria and lost,* Barton replied, amused. *She marshals arguments like warriors and engages them like it's a battlefield.*

He could imagine.

"Did you have anything you wanted to start _with_?"

"Just give me the induction that you give to the new warriors when they come into camp."

She made it sound so simple. Which it might have been, Rhodey concluded, if not for the fact that she was not only a Queen but _his_ Queen, and his first instinct was to bundle her back into the carriage she and her escort had arrived in and send her back to Aer Gerulus for safekeeping.

Not that he was likely to manage that anymore – not without a fight. The news of her arrival had spread through the camp, and the Warlords he'd gathered to report to him were already watching her with hungry eyes.

How long since most of them – any of them – had seen a Queen? And who was Rhodey to deny them this much connection with her?

"All right. Let's walk." It would give the men a chance to see her, and since they were walking and talking there'd be less interruptions. Theoretically. "How much have you been told of the war?"

"It started when the Hydra attacked the Territory Queen's court twenty five years ago and has been going on since then. They're not Blood, but they're not landen either – they have some form of Craft but it's not anything we've seen before. Their Jewels are clear rather than coloured. They attack the Queens wherever they can find them, and they just keep coming." She glanced over at him. "And we only just discovered that their leader is a male who terms himself 'the Red Skull'."

Her information was good – their knowledge of the Red Skull was fairly recent, and while Rhodey had told Nick, he hadn't expected the Warlord Prince to pass it on to the Queen.

Then again, he hadn't expected this kind of a Queen either.

"Here, in this camp, we're running what's essentially Territory-wide guard duty," Rhodey said. "From here, males are trained and kept informed, assigned guard detail and border watch. We've got several hundred warriors out on rotation at any given time, with a couple hundred stationed here at base before they're shipped out. About a hundred are given leave at any one time to spend with their families if they have them."

"Must be hard on their families."

"It is." Which was one of the chief reasons why Rhodey had never married. "We mitigate it by sending them out in squads – twenty men, trained to guard each other's backs and work as a unit." Friends, comrades, and brothers-in-arms – those you could trust to defend and protect.

"How bad has it been lately?"

Rhodey thought about lying as he followed her gaze around the camp. Then she turned back to him and fixed him with a clear stare. He gave her the truth. "It's gotten worse in the last year. They attack more often and in greater numbers than we've seen."

"The people? The land?"

"We can't protect them all." And it stung. They could fight and fight and fight, but in the end, the helpless still died – Blood and landen communities wiped out, villages and towns left full of corpses, the land left empty, crying out for care.

"And this 'Red Skull' – we've got nothing more on him?"

"Only a little – a glimpse and some rumours. A small group of males with specialised training are following up—"

Rhodey broke off. A dark psychic presence was moving through the camp - familiar and daunting. The psychic wave that rippled around him was usual; the concern that tinged the psychic threads was new.

A moment later the men who'd formed a subtle crowd around Rhodey, Lady Hill, and her entourage stepped back so the Warlord Prince could stride through them, the blades of his metal gloves still dripping with blood. No-one was going to stand in the way of a Grey-Jewelled Warlord Prince who'd just stepped off a killing field, and especially not this one.

Once, he'd been Master at Arms in the Phoenix Court, one of the three most powerful men in the Province – in the Territory, since the Phoenix Court had been the only court standing at the time – a trusted confidante of a dark-Jewelled Queen. He'd trained and taught dozens of males in those years – keeping an eye out for the ones who would be leaders, showing them how to fight, how to organise, how to manage men. Since the fall of the Phoenix Court, he'd mostly roamed solo between the various camps, fighting Hydra, encouraging the warriors, advising the leaders he'd once taught and trained when they asked for help.

He was tall and tanned, with rough-hewn planes to his face that the witches sighed over, and he moved like a predator unchallenged.

He _was_ a predator unchallenged.

"Rhodes," he began, then paused as he saw Maria. His brow furrowed as he stared at her. "What in the Darkness are you doing here?"

The growl that rose in many male throats – Rhodey's among them – was cut off as Maria's eyes narrowed. "It's good to see you, too, Logan."

_Logan_?

Ripples passed through the crowd, comprehension flowing slowly. Rhodey looked at her escort in confusion, only to find them staring at their Queen with the same expressions of shock. So this was new to them, too?

"You grew up."

"And you got old."

He grinned then, baring his teeth. "Brat. I may be old, but I can still thrash you for insolence."

"I have my own males for that these days."

"But not to keep you from doing stupid things like turning up in a war camp that's about to be attacked by the Hydra? Yeah," he said, the amusement gone as he looked at Rhodey. "You've got company. Several thousand of them at last count. I stopped to cut their numbers by a couple of dozen, but I figured it was more important to warn you than put a dent in them."

_Mother Night._

"How far away?" Rhodey asked as he began issuing orders to the sector leaders and his aides on psychic threads. They'd need to mobilise the camp. Get the sentries in. Warn the nearby towns and villages...

"Under an hour." Logan looked at Maria, whose escorts had a hold of her arms and were trying to persuade her to leave. "You won't get away in time. And even if you did; better to stay here – we've got close to five hundred men here and established shields – there'll be nowhere safer."

"Other than a long way away," Phil retorted.

"And how are you going to get her that long way away before the Hydra come?" Logan demanded.

"You want us to risk our Queen—?"

"Listen to me, Barton," Logan interrupted. "I didn't teach Maria her survival skills to see her die cornered by Hydra; so when I say it's a risk, believe me, _it's a risk._"

Barton gaped for a moment. Coulson seemed equally floored.

"All right, g_entlemen._" Maria interrupted, her voice clear and authoritative. "We've established that I'm not going anywhere while the Hydra are attacking. Maybe now we should establish how we can help with Lord Rhodey's defence plans for the camp?"

The deference was unexpected – and weighty. Rhodey saw in her eyes the expectation that he would keep not only her, but all of them safe, and felt the press of lives in his hands.

_Not again. Mother Night, not again._

But Rhodey wouldn't let himself think about that. Wouldn't let himself remember failure. Not when his Queen was watching him with steady eyes, trusting her life and the lives of these men to his hands and leadership.

He drew on his Purple Dusk Jewel and all the training of years and kept his expression calm as he began issuing orders.

His Queen trusted him to keep her safe. He could do this.

He _would_ do this.

**tbc**


	7. Branded By Her Hand

**SUMMARY**: _Sometimes, in the deep of winter and the dark of the night, Tony remembered what it felt like to be shattered._

**NOTES**: More arc. And Tony gets his say.

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 7: Branded By Her Hand**

Sometimes, in the deep of winter, Tony's chest ached, right at the edges of his Jewel.

He'd wake in the middle of the night and be unable to fall asleep again. After the first time Pepper kicked him out, Tony took the hint and stayed out of her bed entirely. It was better that way, anyway; he couldn't hurt her if he kept his distance.

Sometimes he felt the flesh around his Jewel burn, scalding off his bones layer by peeling, bloody layer. When that happened, he locked himself in his workroom and made spells, wrote down ideas, researched complicated intersections of Jewelled power, and forced himself to keep doing things – anything.

If he didn't, he'd find himself back in the cold again, curled up against the stone and shivering, while Yinsen's fingers held his wrists and the calm, rusty voice of the other male drew him back towards the edge of sanity, away from the spellwebs that entangled his mind.

Sometimes, in the deep of winter and the dark of the night, Tony remembered what it felt like to be shattered.

Lately, it had been getting worse. Harder to keep things together, to stay focused. The world was sliding away from him, and he could feel himself slipping towards the Twisted Kingdom. The only times he felt whole were on the killing edge and in the rut.

Like now.

He stood on a killing field as a hundred Hydra stormed towards him in an unending wave, their weapons out, their eyes empty and blank.

Tony tore through them with practised ease; pushing his power out in expanding waves of Jewelled strength. He'd discovered this method of destruction while trying to escape his prison, and it had served him and the resistance very well.

Heads popped and bodies collapsed as he burst their 'Jewels', and he dragged thin blades of power through their corpses and shoved the remains out of his way.

_Keep coming, you mindless dicks. I can do this all day._

*Rhodey!* He swept out on a psychic thread, reaching instinctively for the familiar mind. *Hydra on the way!*

*Logan already brought us the news. Can you get back to the camp? We're gonna need all we've got for this.*

Tony grimaced as he lashed out with another wave of power, taking out another swathe of Hydra. And yet they still came. Where were they coming from? And why had they chosen now to attack? And – Mother Night – they had that chit in the camp... *Tell me you got rid of the Queen.*

*They were too close. We couldn't risk her.*

*Sure we could. Just send her and her escort away...*

*Tony. She's not just any Queen, she was trained in the Phoenix Court.* He heard the hesitation in Rhodey's voice and sensed what was coming just before Rhodey hit him with it. *And I'm hers.*

_What?_ Another set of Hydra minds shattered beneath Tony's blast of power. *You're not hers.*

*Yes, I am.*

*No, you're not. You've just been without a Queen so long that you _think_ she's your Queen. What you've got is a perfectly normal reaction–*

*We're not discussing this now, Tony. You need to get your ass back here. I've warned the nearby towns including Stark Manor–*

_Pepper_. *But you couldn't let go of your cock long enough to send the little Queen home?*

*That's enough.* The cold anger in Rhodey's voice said he'd crossed a line, but Tony was a Warlord Prince – he didn't back down or apologise. *Get back here and help or play it solo, it's your call, Tony. Meantime, I've got a camp and a Queen to defend and that's what I'm going to do.*

Tony snarled as the other male cut the psychic connection between them. He swept his power through the remaining Hydra minds in the area like an arm sweeping crystal glasses off a table and onto the floor.

A Queen for Rhodey. That was just rich. A bitch with her greedy little hands wrapped around his best friend's heart – or his balls. Someone to order them all about to her whim. Backed by Fury, of course, because that was all Fury cared about anymore – power and a pretty face to give his dominance legitimacy.

Tony stalked through the bloody mist that hung in the air, feeling the damaged edges of his shattered self grating against each other – the way his bones had ground together as her Warlords held him down...

_No._

He dragged on his Jewels to bolster the fractured pieces of his inner self, and leaped for the Red Wind before the next wave of Hydra could reach him. _Don't think about it. You're not whole – but you survived._

Yinsen hadn't.

_Don't waste it. Don't waste your life, Stark._

But death was all he was good for anymore. Death and destruction and revenge and retribution, meted out by a Red-Jewelled Warlord Prince who walked too close to the Twisted Kingdom for anyone's safety or comfort, let alone his own.

Death, and hurting people who deserved better than him.

_There are no parties, there are no social events, there are no speeches. There is nothing but the next fight._

And Pepper had looked at him with lightless eyes and only asked, _So that will that be all, Prince?_

He'd expected to find her resignation on his desk the next morning but she'd been brisk and civil and brittle as ice. And Tony ached as he went about tidying up the last loose ends of the estate before he headed back out to the camp, but he hadn't tried to make things better between them.

What was the point?

He hadn't mentioned it to Rhodey either. Every time he tried it stuck in his throat. Even earlier, when he'd issued the Winsol invitation – something Pepper had been at him to do since the last time he'd been back at the Manor - he hadn't been able to say the words. It was as though something in him knew that saying them out loud might damage him beyond healing.

Tony chose not to arrive at the camp's landing web, but dropped off the Red Wind before he reached the camp, sight-shielded as well as body-shielded, landing lightly behind a rocky outcropping uphill from the camp.

From this vantage point, he could see the Hydra spread out across the plains below, attacking the camp with their short, clear-coloured bursts of power. They covered the ground as far as Tony could see. Hundreds of them pulsed sharp psychic blows into the shield that was enclosing the camp – not one great shield but many smaller, overlapping ones.

Even as he watched a section of shield blinked out of existence, the Yellow shield vanishing to reveal a Rose shield behind it. There was no breach, no break – just the settling of the shield edges up against the abutting shields. An excellent piece of work by males who'd trained with each other for such a situation when they would have to hold shields up for extended periods of time.

Tony started down towards the encampment and paused.

Down below him, unnoticed by camp and Hydra alike, someone was making their way up the hill beneath Summer-sky shields.

A witch.

A _Queen_.

Rhodey's Queen. Outside the shields that were supposed to keep her safe. Escaping? Or running away?

Tony wasn't sure where the anger came from – the flooding heat beneath his breastbone where his Jewel rested – but he wasn't prepared for it, or the way his body seemed to move without his conscious control to intercept her.

"What do you think you're doing out here?"

She hadn't felt him approach – no surprise since he was Red-shielded – and at his words she stumbled, her ankle twisting on an uneven hollow in the long grass. It was instinct that had Tony catching her arm, not courtesy, but her weight swung them both around. Unbalanced, Tony nearly fell on top of her in the grass, only just stopping himself from crushing her with his weight as his hand scraped against the rocky soil.

He stared down into her eyes, vaguely aware that she smelled of leather and smoke, something spicy and almost intoxicating, and the scent seemed to be coming from the place where her right shoulder met her neck...

A knife pressed lightly into his throat. He caught his breath, his mouth hovering over her skin. An inch more and he'd taste that intoxicating flavour – and have a inch-deep hole in his throat.

"You'd be Prince Stark, then."

"And you'd be Fury's Queen." Tony lifted his head, but the knife continued to press into his throat until he rolled off her, his gut curling with something terrifyingly like desire. Mother Night. No wonder Rhodey had lost his brains over the chit. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." She sat up with the knife still in her hand, eyeing him warily, her shields up. "What are you doing out here?"

"I could ask the same of you. And, in fact, I already have. You're supposed to be inside those shields. In fact—" *Rhodey!*

*Tony, now is not the time!*

A hand caught at his arm as he reached out to tell the other male that their Queen was outside the shields. "Don't tell Lord Rhodes."

"Don't tell Lord Rhodes _what?_" Tony demanded. She was out here without an escort, without protection, with a fucking _Hydra army_ attacking down in the valley, and she'd decided that now was a good time to go for a walk up the hill? "In case you haven't noticed, there are several thousand Hydra down there—"

"And I need one of them."

He stared at her, not sure he'd clearly heard what she just said. "You want a Hydra?"

The look she gave him suddenly made him realise just how young she was. Mother Night. Not even old enough to have had her Virgin Night yet. "I need one. Just one."

"Do I even want to know why?"

"I need to get behind his psychic barriers."

"No. That's been tried."

"But not by a female. Not by a Queen."

"And you know that how?"

"Because not one of you cocks has let a Queen anywhere near a Hydra for the last twenty-five years!"

Sudden temper strained inside Tony; he struggled to keep it leashed. "Of course we haven't – _because they kill the Queens._"

"And has anyone asked why?"

"Because they're the Queens! That's all the reason they need."

"Spoken like a Blood male."

"That _is_ what I am."

"And the Hydra aren't?" She stared at him, her expression one of helpless annoyance – a very similar expression to one he'd seen on Pepper's face countless times; a witch trying to make a Blood male understand something he simply wasn't capable of comprehending except at the most abstract of levels.

Pepper had enough experience with Tony to know not to bother explaining. This little Queen hadn't – yet.

"The Hydra aren't Blood as we understand them, Stark. They wear Jewels but colourless ones. They can use some Craft and have a marginal reserve of power. They have some psychic connection to each other, but their minds burn to ash at the first psychic touch of a male, leaving them empty husks. And they're pretty much all the same – made to the same template – pale skin, dark hair, blue eyes."

"And they kill the Queens."

"But _why_?"

The woman was unbelievable. "Because they're Queens!"

"Because they're a threat."

"That's what I said."

She shook her head, wisps of hair drifting around her face, come loose from her plait. "The Red Skull is a Blood male; his instincts are exactly the same as the ones that drive you."

"I'm going to point out that I haven't killed you." Although he was thinking about wringing her neck.

"Yet." Clear grey eyes fixed on him, steady and arresting. "Would you let me kill you, Prince?"

"N—" The lie died on his lips beneath the look she gave him.

Darkness help him, the chit wasn't just Rhodey's Queen.

Tony looked away, feeling his jaw tighten, remembering what it felt like to be shattered. Remembering what it felt like to have a Queen's hand hard upon him, in his hair, on his cock; to want and hate and fear and loathe...

She slapped him, hard enough to sting. Temper flared and he snarled at her. And she didn't cringe or flinch the way most people did; instead she snarled back.

"I am not her, Prince, and if you're going to be anywhere near me in future, you'd better remember that!"

He stared, still riding the edge of his temper, but feeling the tingle of her handprint on his face like a brand. "You slapped me."

"You needed it." Mother Night but she was a cool one. "Whatever was done to you, Stark, you're still a Warlord Prince of the Blood who wears a dark Jewel. Nothing in the realms can or will change that. What's the first law?"

"To protect." It came out without thinking, the purest core instinct that informed everything else he'd ever done.

_The first law of a Blood male is to protect, Tony. The second is to cherish. It's only the third that's obedience._

The noise of the battlefield rose up below them, the hushing grunts of the Hydra, the shouts of the Blood males trying to defend and protect not only the camp but this Queen – who'd taken herself out of their protection because she was trying to do something more.

"You can't help it," she was saying. "Maybe the Red Skull can't either – but his response is to destroy what he fears can control him."

"And you think that by getting your hands on a Hydra... No."

"I think that by getting my hands on a Hydra, I can find out more about them than any male has found out in the last twenty-five years."

"No." Tony's better judgement was telling him all the ways this was bad. But his instincts were telling him to side with his Queen – she had a certain, crazy logic– "Absolutely not."

"Prince."

"The first law isn't obedience."

"Did I give you a command?"

"You're about to."

She looked at him, solemn as a Priestess presiding over a ceremony. No tantrums, no tears, no tirades. Just one word: "Please."

Mother Night. If he didn't do this, she'd only work out another way. She was definitely that kind of a witch. But if he was going to let her do this, he was going to push every advantage he was allowed. It went against Tony's grain to give in meekly.

"You will tell me exactly what you plan to do, and how you plan to do it. You will tell me what the dangers are and whether you have plans to deal with it. And if I approve of your plan, I will _consider_ getting you a Hydra for Winsol."

He didn't mean to be flippant, it just came out that way.

She probably didn't mean to grin in a way that curled warm hands around his gut – and his balls - it just came out that way.

"Do I get a pony, too?"

Tony glared at her. "Don't push your luck."

**tbc**


	8. Pushing Back

**SUMMARY**: _Knowing when to hold ground and when to give it was always crucial when dealing with Warlord Princes._

**NOTES**: And the last big part of the Iron Man arc. With Pepper. And backstory. This was originally the longest section of the piece, then Thor decided he wanted a rewrite of his section, and outdid Pepper by about 100 words. Damn Norse Gods. Someday I may write Pepper and Tony's backstory if anyone's interested. We'll see.

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 8: Pushing Back**

Pepper was halfway down the staircase in the entryway when Tony's voice was heard on the step. Jarvis opened the door just in time for Tony to stride through, his scarlet coat flapping out behind him, his hair dishevelled, cradling a curled-up woman in his arms. "Where's Pepp–? Oh, there you are."

There was a moment when Pepper was so relieved to see him alive and home she nearly smiled. Then his prosaic statement of greeting registered.

_There you are._

"You'd better take her straight upstairs," she said briskly, holding onto the temper and tears that suddenly threatened. "The Healer's on her way, but there's been a little trouble with the roads and we're trying to clear them..."

Tony seemed to shake himself before he started up the stairs. "I think she just needs rest, but I want the Healer to be sure. How's the household?"

"We survived. No injuries. A couple of the grooms will need days off, though," Pepper said, falling into step with him down the hall and trying to get a look at the woman he carried. "I haven't heard from Rhodey—"

"He's got his hands full right now, thank the Darkness. We're going to have people coming in and out all day. Some of them will want to stay—"

Something was teasing at her, the sense that she was missing something. "Tony, we're not in any state to entertain right now—"

"You invited Rhodey for Winsol. And I know that was before we were attacked, but I can't stop them—"

"You can't stop people from coming for a social visit?"

"They're not going to be social."

Tony shouldered open the door to the Dawn room, Pepper trailing behind him and gesturing the maids out, giving the most senior instructions to bring food and drink for Tony and the guest, while Tony settled the girl in the bed, vanishing her shoes and jacket as he laid her down on the sheets.

She was just a girl, Pepper saw – young and pretty, but still soft with youth. Not Tony's type at all.

Except that the expression on his face as pulled up the covers with Craft was one Pepper hadn't ever seen on Tony in all the years working at Stark Manor. The sensuous mouth twisted faintly in on itself as he looked down at the girl. Then one fingertip pulled open the collar of her jacket just enough for him to bend and brush his lips over the side of her neck.

Ugliness clawed at Pepper's insides as she watched, disbelieving.

Maybe Tony had forgotten he wasn't alone. Maybe he just didn't care.

Either way, it was as though Pepper – and their history – didn't exist. Had never existed. Maybe it hadn't to him.

Standing at the foot of the bed, Pepper looked at Tony and the girl and drew on her Summer-sky Jewel to give her the strength to deal with both Tony and the girl who was clearly important enough to him to put in the suite usually reserved for Queens and visiting digni—

_A Queen._

The thing that had been teasing at her bubbled gently to the surface. A Queen's psychic scent – rich and crisp.

"I can explain." Tony was watching her now.

"You don't have to," Pepper said, interrupting him before he could say anything more. "You don't owe me anything."

He winced. "Pepper—"

Voices rose up from downstairs, the collective sound of angry males. Mother Night, this was going from bad to worse.

"You brought a Queen here without her males?"

"I'm hers, too!"

Was it a declaration or a confession? Pepper couldn't tell.

She thought about the chaos that was probably presently reigning down stairs. She thought about Jarvis and Happy and the other males trying to deal with Princes, and Warlords, and Warlord Princes furious at the taking of their Queen. She thought about what she knew of Prince Fury and his men, and the jagged-edged history between him and Tony.

"I'll stay," she said. "You go and explain this."

"Pepper—"

"Just go, Tony."

Thank the Darkness, he went. Without argument, which seemed odd – until Pepper looked at the girl and met a steady blue gaze. Tony hadn't gone; he'd been sent.

"They're going to want to come up here."

"Tony will keep them away." Pepper spoke with more confidence than she felt.

The girl smiled, but it took effort. "He'll try. But I don't think he's quite up to facing off against Nick and Phil and Clint all at once."

"He might surprise you."

"Maybe. I'm sorry. I didn't want him either."

"You didn't want—? Oh, no, you don't." The girl was trying to sit up. "You should be resting."

"They need to see me," the girl said, crawling to the edge of the bed. "It'll be easier if I'm in a chair than lying down. Please?"

As she helped the girl out to the sitting room, Pepper reflected it was no surprise that Tony would find himself a Queen who also pushed herself beyond her limits.

Pepper helped settle the girl into one of the high-backed old armchairs and dug an old quilt out of the linen press. A quick cleaning spell removed the worst of the heavy cedar scent, and a warming one would save the young woman some energy. "It's a little musty, but it will keep you warm."

A knock on the door heralded the maid with the tray, and Pepper took it and sent her back down for more coffee, tea, and cups.

"You think food will distract them?"

"No." Pepper handed her a small bowl of soup. "But you can eat something before they arrive. And seeing you look after yourself might curb the worst of their temper." It occurred to her that she was bossing a Queen around, but the girl was clearly exhausted and in need of care, and wasn't telling Pepper to stop.

"You don't know Nick."

Still, the girl accepted the soup and the slice of bread with a meekness that Pepper, accustomed to Tony's swift changes of mood, instantly distrusted. As it turned out, she was wrong. The girl ate quietly, her head leaned against the wide wing of the chair as Pepper turned over the two mugs and began filling them with coffee.

Doubtless they made a very domestic picture to the four males and one witch who strode in the door less than a minute later. Two Warlord Princes, a Prince, and a Warlord, all full of temper, and a Black Widow whose dark psychic scent was filled with concern.

Pepper had met Prince Coulson before, and there was no mistaking Prince Fury – a Warlord Prince who filled the room with his presence and his temper. No wonder he and Tony had never gotten on.

"You," Prince Fury intoned as he planted his feet at the edge of the sitting room carpet, "have a lot to answer for, young lady! Just what were you doing outside those shields? Do you or do you not remember me telling you—"

"I remember everything you tell me, Prince. But in the war camp, I made my own judgement."

In the space of a moment, the young woman had shifted into a Queen – a Queen sitting in the chair with a quilt over her lap and a bowl of soup in her hands, but a Queen nevertheless.

Pepper nearly forgot she was filling the coffee cup.

"And did your own judgement include the right to ditch your escorts and put your life in danger?"

"When balanced against defeating the Hydra, yes," she said. "It did."

"The Hydra?"

Prince Coulson did a double-take. "That was you?"

"No," she said softly. "That was Jamie."

"'_Jamie'_?!"

The young Queen winced at the combined exclamation from her males. "I'll tell you, but you have to sit down. All of you. I don't want you looming over me while I talk."

"After Natasha checks you over," said the Warlord firmly.

"I'm fine."

"Maria."

She rolled her eyes. "Natasha, tell them!"

"She just needs rest," the Black Widow said after a moment during which the two women communicated by a distaff thread that Pepper could sense but not overhear. "Which she'll be doing after you've heard the story."

The males grumbled but sat – except for Tony, who caught Pepper's arm when she tried to leave and tugged her up against his side. *You're staying, too.*

*Tony–*

*Sir,* Jarvis' psychic thread was directed at Tony but included Pepper, *I'm afraid there's a Prince Howlett demanding entry on the doorstep.*

*Howlett's here?* Tony frowned. *Why am I suddenly not surprised? Send him up.*

A minute later a tall, dark-haired Warlord Prince with a brawler's heavy build and rough sideburns stalked into the room. "You left one helluva mess to clean up, brat."

All the males stiffened, but the girl tilted her head. "And you'd be neater?"

"I'd leave them in smaller pieces at least." The teeth bared in a fierce grin at the girl before he finally turned to acknowledge the bristling males. "Fury. Stark."

"Maria," Fury said with the kind of quiet that presaged a storm, "how, exactly, do you know Howlett?"

Maria took a deep breath. "I guess that'll have to be part of the story?"

"Please."

It took a minute to settle everyone, to offer everyone tea, but Pepper used it to put some distance between her and Tony, and the Queen used it to finish her soup and bread.

*Please give the kitchen my compliments,* she said as Prince Howlett and Prince Fury exchanged careful barbs, and Tony and Prince Fury exchanged not-so-careful barbs. *And stay. I'd like you to hear this, too.*

Pepper was only the housekeeper here at Stark Manor, but she knew enough court Protocol that when a Queen said '_I'd like you to do something,_' it wasn't a request.

So she took a seat outside the circle of couches and lounges, ignoring Tony's invitation to sit beside him. He might ignore the proprieties, but she wouldn't. She was what she was – a light-Jewelled hearth witch of no breeding – and she didn't belong here, in the First Circle of a young Queen.

"Well, Maria?" Prince Coulson's query was gentle, but there was a quiet inflexibility in it. "I think you owe us an explanation. You would never tell us where you came from, or what you were doing in that cabin. Or even why you couldn't tell us."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"My mother and father were a witch and Warlord in Lady Grey's court. Not first or second circles – much further down. Seventh or eighth perhaps. Most of what I know of them I was told; my mother died when I was born and my father..."

"Her father had his cock stuck so deep in his wife that when she died he was left without his balls," said Prince Howlett crudely when she hesitated. "There's no nicer way to put it."

"I don't think I saw him more than a half-dozen times when I was a child. When it became clear that I was a Queen, Lady Grey and Prince Summers adopted me. I grew up in the Phoenix Court."

Among some of the most powerful Blood in the Territory. It certainly explained the girl's poise – and her handling of Tony. Dark-Jewelled males were often thought to be difficult to handle by lighter-Jewelled witches. Mostly, Pepper had found, it was experience, and working with their nature, rather than against them.

She'd had to learn that the hard way.

"You said you were adopted by a local Queen."

"She _was_ local. Lady Grey grew up in the same village as my mother."

Prince Fury scowled. "And your father just let you go?"

"Her father didn't have a choice," growled Prince Howlett. "He gave her up for adoption before he realised what she was, and we blocked him every time he came crawling back to try to claim parental rights."

"And leaving her in the forest? That was looking after her?"

"Teaching her survival _was_ looking after her," said the older Warlord Prince soft and grim. "Teaching her how to hide herself when the Hydra were killing the Queens was looking after her. Not drawing attention to her was looking after her."

"It was only a couple of years out in the forest," Maria murmured. "And I liked that life."

For a moment, the yearning on the young face was like a knife – a wistfulness for something simpler, something long gone.

Pepper knew the feeling. She'd felt it the first time she looked into Tony Stark's eyes and realised she was in love with a dark-Jewelled Warlord Prince from one of the wealthiest aristo families in the Territory. She'd felt it the day he returned from captivity – a fighting spirit in fragile flesh – and she glimpsed the darkness that now dwelled within him. And she'd felt it the afternoon she'd realised Tony had nothing he wanted her to share – the afternoon she realised that she'd been a brief entertainment for a Warlord Prince and nothing more.

She looked away from the Queen, and found Tony watching her with shuttered eyes.

"All right," Fury said, "so, what's this about the Hydra and...Jamie? Who exactly is this Jamie?"

Maria cupped her hands around her mug and stared into it. "His name was Jamie Madrox. He was an Opal-Jewelled male, and he was captured by the Red Skull. He was the Hydra."

"He was the Hydra?"

"The Red Skull did something to him that made...more of him. Some kind of a tangled web that trapped him in it, and forced him to split himself over and over again. They weren't him, but they weren't themselves either. Like...blank slates that could be imprinted by the Red Skull. Thousands of them. Jamie didn't know how many – he'd lost count long before he started walking in the Twisted Kingdom."

Pepper drew a sharp breath. She wasn't the only one.

"You went into the Twisted Kingdom? Alone?"

"Prince Stark was there!"

Heads turned towards Tony. "I made her tell me what she planned first!"

Prince Fury looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel; it was Prince Coulson who found his voice first. "And that makes it all better?"

"No, but it made it a calculated risk instead of a suicide mission."

"Risking _our Queen_—"

"She's not only _your_ Queen—"

"If you think I'm going to allow—"

"Who said anything about _allowing_—"

"—unstable, risk-taking—"

"And you, of course, were a paragon of obedience back in Lady Peggy's court—"

"That court isn't in discuss—"

They were on their feet now, tempers focused on each other, barely noticing the Warlord and the Prince trying to break their attention. Prince Howlett, on the other hand, had taken a step _back,_ and the Black Widow was watching the Queen who looked more weary by the moment.

Pepper stood. "Gentlemen!"

They turned on her, their tempers sharp as blades against her psychic skin. She flinched instinctively but held her ground with her anger. Knowing when to hold ground and when to give it was always crucial when dealing with Warlord Princes.

"I suggest you take a look at your Queen before you continue arguing."

The Black Widow was kneeling beside the chair, taking the mug from the girl's shaking hands. "She needs rest, as I said before." She stepped back to let Prince Howlett scoop the girl up. *If you would show him the way, Lady.*

It took Pepper a moment to realise she was being addressed; 'Lady' was not a term people usually applied to her. "This way, Prince."

She led the way into the bedroom, while the Widow intercepted Tony and Prince Fury. "A word with you both."

It gave the girl a moment with Prince Howlett as he settled her down in the bed. "You should have said something, brat."

The girl sighed. "He died, Logan. I didn't want him to die."

"Did you do it, or did Stark?"

"Stark did." Her eyes fluttered shut as Prince Howlett settled her in the bed. Pepper pulled up the covers over Maria, then paused as the girl's eyes opened and she caught at Pepper's wrist. "He's been pulling back because he was afraid to hurt you. I don't think he will now."

Pepper blinked, heat rushing across her cheeks as the questions piled up behind her tongue. Prince Howlett made a noise like a choke, caught between amusement and ruefulness.

Then the door to the room pushed open and Prince Fury entered, heading for the bed like a bolt of power to its target.

"If you need anything at all, you can let me know and I'll see what I can do," she told the girl, then walked out, past the others waiting to go in.

Tony was in the hallway, staring out the window into the garden. "Is she okay?"

"Just tired." As tired he looked – although perhaps not as ready to fall over as the young witch.

"And you?" He turned to look at her, studying her. "You're okay?"

"Of course."

He nodded, oddly subdued. "I invited them to stay over Winsol. They're going to, anyway, as long as she's here."

"You can't keep her here, Tony."

"I wouldn't want to; she's a little bitch when she wants her way." The words were said without heat, though. "I didn't consult you before inviting guests over for Winsol."

"It's your house; you can invite whomever you like—"

"Pepper." He took her wrists in his hands, slid his palms up to her elbow, warm thumbs running along the insides of her arms. "I've been a prick."

Coming from Tony, that was practically an apology in and of itself. _He's been pulling back because he was afraid to hurt you,_ she heard the girl say in her head, _I don't think he will now._

Something like hope rose, and she yanked it back down and stuffed it out of sight. But he was looking at her so chastened, and his touch was doing things to her insides... She managed to get out, "Yes. You have."

"I'd like not to be a prick any more."

"You're a Warlord Prince."

"Meaning being a prick comes naturally?"

"I didn't say it."

"You didn't have to. You shouldn't have to. Can we..." His thumbs rubbed at her. "Can I make things better?"

Could he? That was the question. Days ago – hours ago – she would have said no. Absolutely no. Because he'd hurt her too much and she had the right to reject a Warlord Prince's interest – especially one who wasn't emotionally stable.

The man who was standing before her felt...grounded. Solid again, the way he hadn't felt since before he was captured and abused. Maybe it was what happened when a Warlord Prince found his Queen. Maybe it was because it looked like the war against the Hydra was ended.

Maybe it was just that Pepper wanted to believe him.

"You can try," she said, with all honesty.

"You'll let me try?"

"Yes."

"I can work with that." And he leaned in to kiss her.

Pepper put her hand up over his mouth. "Starting with sitting down, having something to eat, and resting."

Tony's eyes gleamed with laughter – and a Warlord Prince's hunger. But he kissed her fingertips and only said, "Yes, Pepper."

**tbc**


	9. The Price Of Protection

**SUMMARY**: _But he was unable to protect as his instincts demanded, unable to fight with the strength of his Jewels, unable to do anything but watch._

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 9: The Price Of Protection**

The floor was not the most comfortable place to sleep, but Thor's preferred choice of bed was out of the question.

He approved of Erik's suspicions about him – they were right. He _was_ here to earn his way into Jane's bed. Where Erik was wrong was that he posed any danger to Jane.

So he made his bed in the downstairs workroom, amidst the papers and books and herbs of Jane's studies, and let the old, familiar dreams take him.

Sif came to stand by him at the window, looking out on the bright city spread out beneath the palace, her expression grim. "_I can't speak up in the tribunal on your behalf, Thor_."

"_And I do not expect you to_." He belonged to Sif, as a Warlord Prince belonged to his Queen. She was expected to defend him; and she would. He knew that to the core of his being. "_I will pay whatever price they ask of me. Whatever the cost_."

She'd cupped his cheek in her palm. "_And if the price is death_?"

"_Then I will pay that, too_."

Thor turned over on the camping bedroll Jane had given him to sleep upon. It was worn and a little musty, but strong with the psychic scent of her – and the faint, faded psychic scent of her father. The first time she had helped him down to the bedroll out in the cold fields of night, with the stars bright overhead and the wind flowing through the sky, he'd smelled that scent – male and tender with love – and been jolted by the strength of the possessive hunger that rose in him.

His hands had tightened on Jane's arms, intending to draw her down to him, to erase this other male's scent from her skin, from her memory – before she gasped in surprise and he realised what he was doing and his error in doing it. Not a lover's scent, but a father's.

The hunger remained, but Thor could wait to satisfy it. He could wait for Jane to come to him.

He had time.

"_Exile_?" Hogun blinked.

"_Well, it's better than death_," Fandral noted. "_Although not by much_."

"_Where you go, we'll go_," Volstagg declared. "_The Warriors Three stand by Thor_."

Loki had said nothing – not at first, his features sharp and studying. "_It's more than just exile, isn't it? Thor_?"

He'd been holding himself so still, trying not to sense Black Widows' Tangled Webs closing in around him even as he stood there. Trying to believe this was not happening to him.

Loki's hands on his shoulders negated that. "_What did they do, brother? Tell me and whatever it takes_–"

And Thor had opened his inner psychic barriers to his brother – when had they ever held secrets between them? And Loki had been silenced.

Something slid across Thor's skin, waking him from a dream of bright battle and clear laughter. Horror crawled along his psychic senses, a foulness that stained the night with its presence and had no place here in Jane's townhouse.

He rose quietly, his bare feet nearly silent across the floor before he passed his body through the wood of the door so as not to make noise opening and closing it.

Above him, in the upstairs hallway, a shadow paused on the landing, nothing more than the faintest flutter in the darkness. *Thor?*

She spoke his name like a caress, and Thor leaned into the tightly-focused psychic thread - from her to him, even as he listened to the noises around the house and his instincts pricked at his skin. *I felt something.*

*Yes. Like scratchy rope against my skin.* She came down the stairs, using Craft to silence the sound of her footsteps, the ties of her thin wrap trailing behind her. *I thought I heard voices before – only–*

*Only?*

The spell fell with startling abruptness, a net to capture unwary prey.

Thor instinctively reached for depths of the Ebon-grey, but the tangled webs of the Asgardian Widows blocked him from accessing his full strength. He was left with only a handful of power.

Only a handful of power to use against the spell as it settled around him, trying to freeze his muscles and bind his bones. Only a handful of power to fight the shadowy men who stepped through the door, their movements confident and without the fear they should have shown had they known what waited for them in the darkness.

Even hampered by the spell clawing at his psychic senses, even without the complete capabilities of his Ebon-grey Jewel, Thor was still battle trained for war, and dangerous in his own right as a Warlord Prince of the Blood - passionate, protective, and vicious.

His blood ran hot as his temper ran cold. Thor moved without conscious thought.

The first male died as his neck broke – Thor's fist took him in the softness beneath his jaw. The second was barely more ready, although he at least had a knife in hand when Thor called in his blade and spitted him through the chest.

Honourless men, to break into a witch's house by darkness with a spell designed to incapacitate—

This was no accident, but a planned, prepared break-in, with an intended target—

The third man called in a pikestaff with a blade that shone with Green-Jewelled power and slashed it across Thor's shields, breaking them in their weakened state.

"Tho—!"

"Continue to fight and she dies," snarled the man whose hand clenched around Jane's throat, cutting off her warning cry.

One look was all Thor needed to see the lay of the land.

He raised his hands in surrender, saw the blunt end of the pikestaff coming for his head, failed to dodge—

Moonlight gleamed bluish off the angled shards of basalt that had given the Hrimthurs their nickname among the Asgard - Frost Giants, and Thor threw back his head at the sky and breathed deep of the crisp air.

Generations past, it had been a common enough pastime for Asgardian youths to run raids into the heart of Frost Giant Territory to steal something of value. It had fallen into disrepute when Thor was no more than an infant; his mother had brokered a deal with the Lady of the Hrimthurs and no more raids were permitted.

"_One of your best ideas, this,_" he murmured to Loki as his brother came alongside him. "_A challenge worthy of warriors_!"

"_And here was I just thinking it was fun,_" came the droll retort. "_Have you given thought to how we'll leave our mark?_"

Thor had. And when he told Loki, his brother's glittering smile spoke eloquently of his accord.

His head ached as though he'd been drinking the mountain mead all night. Only—

Thor jerked up as someone shook him ungently, then overbalanced and fell onto his back, his arms bound behind him with tightly-wrapped ties.

*Mother Night, how hard is your head?* Lady Darcy demanded. *I've been kicking you for the last five minutes!*

*Jane,* he managed, using a psychic thread since he couldn't seem to speak.

A muffled 'unnnnh!' drew his attention to the bed in the middle of the room - Jane's bed, with Jane on it, her wrists and ankles tied to the posts, her nightgown damp with sweat. There was a gag tucked firmly in her mouth and her eyes were wild lit by the witchlights hanging either side of the bed. She thrashed, dragging at the ropes that bound her, but to no avail.

Hot fury filled Thor, brought him to his feet–or tried to. The world tilted about him and nausea clutched at his gut. He sank to his knees. *The spell–*

*Disorients you. It gets worse when you struggle. If you sit still it doesn't hurt so bad.*

Don't struggle? Ask him rather, not to breathe! Yet Thor forced himself to go limp, because he needed all his wits about him to get out of this. And, indeed, the room stopped twisting about him, and the psychic bindings on his body and mind relaxed - not entirely, just a little.

*Where is Erik?*

In answer, Darcy moved back a little to show him the slumped shadow of Erik. *He kept struggling and I guess the spell overwhelmed him.* Her psychic voice quavered a little before she got control of it. *I don't suppose you can get out of the spell?*

Thor was already trying to break through the bonds that held his wrists behind his back. At the Ebon-grey, he need barely have strained himself. Limited to his present levels of power, he had no strength at all.

"And this is considered a suitable punishment for a Warlord Prince of the Asgardian court?" Loki asked in rank disbelief. "For a raid that was once a common occurrence among the Asgard?"

"Once," said Odin curtly, turning from the window of the palace. "No more. That custom ended when we formed the treaty - for good reason."

"And we have not raided them in the years since," argued Loki, his pointed face pale and sharp. "Surely that argues for some lenience in the punishment!"

"He killed a male of the Hrimthurs' court!"

"A stripling brat of a Frost Giant! And it was an accident!"

Thor listened to them, hunched over, his elbows on his knees, silent. He felt dulled - as though a light within him had been covered over. Once again, he reached for the full depth of his Jewelled-power and came up with...nothing. Or, if not nothing, so little power that it seemed almost pointless to use it.

"Be careful what you say, my son," Odin told him grimly. "He was also the son of the Territory Queen and she was prepared to take her Territory to war on account of his death."

"And so Thor is the sacrifice we make for peace?"

His father bowed his head. "Yes."

The door of the room swung open and a man sauntered in. "All comfortable, Jane?" He addressed his words to Jane rather than to Thor and Darcy. His smile was foul as stagnant water as he sat down on the side of the bed and brushed his fingers across her cheek. "We're going to have a little talk - continuing the one we started four years ago and which was so rudely interrupted by that bitch primping herself as Queen."

Thor tried to lunge to his feet, ignoring Darcy's psychic hiss to stay still. Again, he collapsed on the floor, unable to go on.

"You see?" The man laughed nastily. "Your friend can't help you, although he'll bloody himself trying against Hobie's Green shields. It'll be entertaining watching him - if I was going to watch." His hand stroked down Jane's throat as she tried to ease her body away from him. "But I've only ever had eyes for you, my dear Jane..."

He flicked a finger and the gag untied and floated away by Craft. Jane spat. "Maria warned you what would happen if you ever tried this again, Nigel!"

"The Lady Hill is not here. Nor are her males." Nigel said, and his hand splayed across Jane's breast and squeezed. Thor felt himself go cold - the blind, unthinking rage of a Warlord Prince. "I am. And I'm going to do what I should have done years ago..."

Jane's jaw tightened and she tried to twist away as Nigel bent down to kiss her, but she had no room on the bed, tied as she was.

Thor fought the spell, pushing himself as far as he dared before he gave up, panting. If he had his full Jewelled strength, he would plunge to the depths of the Ebon-grey, pulling Nigel and his accomplices down with him, smashing through their inner webs, leaving them broken and unable to use Craft.

If he possessed his full Jewelled strength, he would never have been here in the first place.

But he was sealed off from the strength that was his - by Birthright and Offering. Unable to protect as his instincts demanded, unable to fight with the strength of his Jewels, unable to do anything but watch as this upstart prick violated a witch whom Thor had come to hold dear.

A rustle woke Thor, a woman's voice muttering crossly to herself as she swished through the long grass of the field, hauling something long and awkward behind her - something which smacked him in the belly as she tripped over him.

"Oh!"

He had caught her as she fell, cradling her slim figure against his own so she might not fall hard, and caught his breath at her scent. Her hair was a dark spill over his hands, and her face a pale oval by the starlight. "Careful," he murmured and felt her still at his touch, her breath coming short against his throat.

"I...I wasn't expecting to fall over someone in the middle of a field," she retorted, and if there was a breathlessness in her voice, her gaze was direct and did not drop shyly before him.

"Then you come out here often?"

"And never tripped over anyone else." Her words were tart, and brought a smile to him, unthinking. "May I get up now? I'm a little short on time."

"A lover's assignation?" His voice felt rough in his throat, almost scratchy at the thought of another male putting his hands on this witch.

"Much rarer." Her smile lit up the night around them, delight and eagerness that had nothing to do with Thor, yet which touched him all the same. "A conjunction of planets."

How long had it been since he had _felt_? Seasons. Perhaps even years.

So far from home, so long in exile from his land, his Jewelled strength, and his people, Thor felt the first flash of hunger then, desire as bright and warm as a flame within his soul for a witch whose name he didn't even yet know.

With no hope of fighting the spell, Thor forced himself to turn his attention to working out how to break it. But it was solid and well-crafted, fuelled by the power of a Green Jewel, locking them within their strength.

Locking them _within_ their strength...

Thor could sense the Jewels of the others in the house - Jane's Rose Jewel, Darcy and Erik's Yellow Jewels, the Purple Dusk Jewel that the male, Nigel, wore, and the Green Jewel - Hobie's - that held them all in place...

On the bed, Jane fought and bit and called for help, but Thor felt the aural shield around the house, preventing any noise from escaping. There would be no help from outside.

Only from inside. Only from within.

He sank to the depth of the Rose, felt the barrier of the Black Widow's web block him, felt his Ebon-grey strength fill him to bursting before the excess flowed away as water through his fingers. Yet he was still aware of the Ebon-grey beneath him. The power that was rightfully his still sang to his senses.

He could reach that power once, for just long enough to drag down the Green and shatter the Purple Dusk. But he would break the tangled web that the Widows had wound around him, and would end up broken in turn.

And yet, everything had a price.

_If the price is death?_

_Then I will pay that, too._

Thor didn't let himself think. Instead, he took a slow breath and plunged deep into his strength, ripping through the tangled web that bound him, feeling the power rush in on him like a weight too heavy to be borne, a pressure that would break through his self and leave him shattered.

But not before he took his enemies with him.

He tore through Nigel's Purple Dusk web without effort - the man was neither warrior nor prepared for such an attack. Hobie fared no better at the Green, although he put up a little more of a fight - for all the good it did.

Thor felt them break and let them go.

He sank to the Ebon-grey, landing lightly on the web that sang with his colours, and let the rushing power flood through him, embracing it like a lover. One last moment to be what he had been born to be - an Ebon-grey-Jewelled Warlord Prince of the Blood - before it all ended.

His family said their farewells in the cool light of dawn, privately, in the Queen's apartments.

Thor didn't remember much of it - his father's gruff blessing, Loki's subdued anger, Sif's reassuring steadiness. Everything seemed muted after the tangled web had closed around him, as though a part of him was sealed away.

But he remembered his mother's kiss, her hands on his brow, on his breast, her lips and her tears on his cheek. He remembered her last words to him, soft as a caress and powerful as a prophecy.

_*Be worthy of your Jewels and you will find your way home, my son.*_

Thor let those words echo in the emptiness of his spirit as the guards escorted him away, no longer a Warlord Prince of the Asgardian court; just a Rogue without a Queen.

Erik's Yellow Jewel was no match for the power of an Ebon-grey-Jewelled Warlord Prince who'd regained his full strength and was hovering on the savage edge of his nature. So Erik let his eyes do the protesting, and allowed himself to be verbally reassured by Jane before he and Darcy floated Nigel's unconscious body downstairs.

After a moment's hesitation, Thor took Jane's hand and drew her into his lap on the bed.

She didn't protest as he settled her against him, sensing the edgy need in him even as a part of her shied away from him, wary after Nigel's assault. And Thor thanked the Darkness that she was willing to give him this much of an anchor in the internal storm that was the return of his nature and the power of his Jewels.

As a Warlord Prince teetering on the killing edge, Thor desperately needed a feminine connection. Sif would have anchored him, Queen to Warlord Prince, but Sif was far away, and what he craved of Jane she could not give him - not now, after the events of the evening.

Unfortunately, he needed that anchorage _now_.

He smoothed his hands along her arms, pressing his cheek against the line of her neck and shoulder, hoping her touch would be enough to soothe him - aware of the hungry ache warning him it would not.

A door opened downstairs - the front door - and unfamiliar male voices drifted up to them. He tensed, his temper rising again – an instinct beyond his control. In his arms, Jane shifted, but only looked up at him as his arms tightened around her. "It's just Maria."

A moment later there were footsteps climbing the stairs, and then a woman stood at the door of Jane's room, her expression wary, her eyes tired as the took in the scene, before her clear, grey gaze came to rest on him.

Something loosened within Thor as he looked back at her.

A Queen. Young and virgin and light-Jewelled, yes, but with a sense of a deeper, darker strength about her. Close to the Offering, then, and fierce with the soul of a warrior as she looked upon him.

"Prince." Her gaze flicked to Jane. "Jane, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. It was close but not—" Jane's voice quivered. "I'm fine, Maria."

The steady gaze shifted back to Thor. "Is she telling the truth?"

"I'm right here, you know!"

"And he's a Warlord Prince who considers you under his protection. He'll give me the truth." Her eyes demanded answers of him. "Prince?"

"Lady." His voice felt rusty; but her strength smoothed out the rough edges in him, settling what Jane alone couldn't soothe. "Jane speaks the truth."

"Good." She exhaled, soft and sure, and her eyes met his without fear. "I think we need to talk."

**tbc**

**UNIVERSE NOTES**: **Kneoria** asked a question about the universe which I've fused the Avengers cast with - this is the universe in Anne Bishop's "Black Jewels" series, about magic users called the Blood. There are about 9 books in the series - the original trilogy, with two subsequent 'short story sets' and one 'tie in', one standalone novel in the same universe but set much earlier, and a duology related to both that standalone and the original trilogy. There's a little bit about the various Jewel strengths and castes at Anne Bishop's site, but I've summarised the short version below.

Jewel strength varies from White (lightest, weakest) to Black (darkest, strongest) with the order being White, Yellow, Tigers Eye, Rose, Summer Sky, Purple Dusk, Opal, Green, Sapphire, Red, Grey, Ebon Grey, Black. The darker the Jewel, the more power the individual has. Not all Blood wear Jewels - only those whose strength is too much for containment within their bodies.

Possible castes for males: landen (non-Blood), Blood male, Warlord, Prince, Warlord Prince.

Possible castes for females: landen (non-Blood), Blood female, Priestess, Healer, Black Widow, Queen.**  
**


	10. Dichotomous

**SUMMARY**: _At that moment Bruce felt whole. As though he wasn't two people in one body, but just one man. And he shuddered with the pleasure of it._

**NOTES**: This is one of the sections I had the most trouble with - trying to work out how Bruce fit into this universe. I hope you like the solution I came up with!

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 10: Dichotomous**

Bruce didn't like going into towns these days.

Too many aristos clustered together, drawing together in solidarity, protecting each other. Too many people who'd heard what happened to Lady Blonsky. Too many Blood who'd only heard that a Queen died at his hands, not what that Queen had been doing to deserve death.

He wouldn't have risked it at all if not for Reva and her family – slim and nimble as she skipped ahead of him, still child enough to be excited at the journey, even in her eagerness to find help for her father.

_Stupid, Banner,_ he thought as they reached the edge of the town. _Shouldn't have stayed to help. Shouldn't have gotten attached._

People moved along the road the town, headed about their business. They glanced at Bruce and Reva, a moment's curiosity and surprise at the sight of the shabby, well-travelled Prince and the simply-dressed farm girl, but there was no alarm in their faces, only the distant look of busy people.

"My feet hurt."

"We're nearly there," Bruce reassured her, but swung her up into his arms anyway.

Sweet Darkness, let the Healer be willing to come out and see Alil.

Life here was hard enough, even in the good times. The land hereabouts was difficult to farm and starved of the Queen's Gift for too many years due to the Queens staying close to their home villages and town – reluctant to venture out too far for fear of the Hydra.

Now that the Hydra were gone, perhaps that would change.

Or perhaps the land would be overrun by Queens like Amelia Blonsky; witches who might nurture the land and the Blood – but only for her fellow aristos and the people who did what she wanted them to do.

Inside, the stranger stirred, recalling the feel of Lady Blonsky's neck between Bruce's hands before he'd snapped her neck.

"Bruce?"

He took a deep breath and pushed the stranger and his wild, uncontrollable anger away. "Nearly there..."

A passer-by gave them the address of the Healer's house, and Bruce set Reva down and knocked on the door. "We're going to ask the Healer to come and see your father, and I'll pay her fees. But I might not be able to come with you—"

"Banner!"

The shout down the end of the street warned him. He surrounded Reva and himself with a Green shield, using his body to shelter her as he called in his wallet and handed the whole of it to her.

"Bruce?" Her eyes stared up at him, huge and dark and concerned.

The door opened on a red-haired woman. Bruce pushed Reva in through the door. "Tell her about your father." Then he looked at the Healer and blinked as the psychic scent of her caste registered – a Black Widow Healer. "Take her inside, close the door and don't let her out until they're gone, no matter what you hear."

Her brows drew downwards and her mouth opened to protest, but Bruce was already stepping out into the street.

The morning cloud-light gleamed off Emil Blonsky's hair, dirty blond above a face that the Blood in the region had considered handsome, but which Bruce had always thought carried a touch of cruelty. A glance behind him showed that Blonsky had blocked off the other end of the street, too. And as Bruce turned to face Blonsky, Sapphire-Jewelled shields sprang up to keep him from running away.

They had him cornered like a rabid dog.

So they thought.

Inside him, the angry stranger quivered, waiting to be let out. Waiting to start the slaughter. Bruce held him back. Not here, not now.

"I told you to leave me alone, Blonsky," Bruce said quietly.

"After you killed my sister?"

"Did you know what she was doing? But of course you did. You protected her – supplied her with her victims..." Bruce's gorge rose at the memory.

Blood was memory's river, a psychic trail of emotions felt when the blood was spilled. And Lady Amelia Blonsky had bathed in the stuff – revelled in the pain of those she'd tortured and torn – the weak, the helpless, the unnoticed. And her family had aided and abetted her, protected her from notice, counting the honour of the family over their honour as Blood.

Blonsky's coldly aristo features twitched. "You killed a Queen, Banner. And everything has a price."

"Bruce!"

"Reva, no!"

Bruce tried to take a step towards the girl fighting off the Healer and pelting down the stairs, but a fist of Sapphire -Jewelled power closed around his throat – too dark for his Green Jewel to attack. He could only stand frozen as one of Blonsky's friends scooped Reva up, binding her arms and legs so she couldn't struggle.

"Hey, Emil, looks like he likes them young and feisty!"

Bruce fought the invisible fist around his throat, fought the stranger who raged inside Bruce, demanding to be let out. _Let me out! Let me fight him!_

Too risky. Too dangerous. _You killed a Queen—_We_ killed a Queen..._ The Queens were supposed to be the heart of the land – to nurture the people in the land. What Lady Blonsky had been was perverted beyond enduring, but she'd still been a Queen...

But _Reva_...

Emil Blonsky was watching him struggle, the blue eyes empty and cold. Then the man smiled – a thin, cruel smile that chilled Bruce to the bone, "She'll be just your type, then, Talbot? A little taming and she'll quieten right down."

_Dull eyes stared up at him with a shuddering emptiness. The wild stranger in Bruce approached the Blood female, his hands out, his Jewel as plain as the rage that stained his face._

"_Who did this to you?" He barely recognised the voice – rough with anger and disbelief._

_The woman had no tongue left to speak, nor the Jewelled strength to do more than send Bruce the briefest image of a woman's face and the sense of a name – an effort that left her trembling._

_*Blonsky.*_

There was a moment when silence seemed to flow all along the street, still and absolute.

Then the stranger rose within Bruce, faster than thought, wilder than the summer storms that churned through this part of the Territory. Dark-Jewelled power gleamed like a knife in his hand as he thrust through the invisible fist around his throat, snapping the Sapphire grip with casual disdain.

Blonsky's eyes widened in shock and pain as his shields broke and he stumbled back. Then his face contorted in rage. "Get him!"

Power soaked through Bruce's mind – darker than his Green Jewel of Rank, and yet he felt whole within it – not broken by the excess as he should have been if a Green-Jewelled male was filled with Grey-Jewelled power. He'd tried to explain it to Betty once – this _other_ that both was and wasn't him, like a reflection in a slightly warped mirror.

_It's like there's a Warlord Prince inside me, waiting to come out – only he's always angry, always enraged. A Warlord Prince at the killing edge, all the time._

Her palms had been cool against his face, fearless and beautiful. _Even Warlord Princes at the killing edge have their purpose, Bruce._

Bruce wasn't a fighter, had never trained with the warriors of his town, but this other male – this other self – moved with a grace that left him shaking inside.

There was a bladed weapon in his hands and he used it as a focus to defend against the lighter-powered bolts of the other males. His shields took the damage, weakening but not falling, and he levelled his own bolts of power back at them and watched their shields fall beneath the Grey under a background of shouts and cries, and a long, high-pitched scream.

_Reva!_

Everything became sharp, edged with the fury that gave his blows power and his shields strength.

Blonsky didn't matter. The shattering minds of Blonsky's friends didn't matter. The blood that splashed his shields as he wielded the blade against them didn't matter.

What mattered was reaching Reva and slaughtering anything that got in his way—

"Lady, _no!_"

"Bruce!"

"Prince!" Startled eyes beneath an upraised hand, but no fear in her expression – only the surprise that resonated along the bond between them...

The blade stopped just shy of her hand.

The stranger quivered with something like pleasure, straining towards the young Queen with eagerness, even as it had lunged for Lady Blonsky's throat with the intent to kill. Bruce tried to take a step forward and found himself constrained.

Something sharp nudged his throat and a deep and dangerous voice spoke. "Step back from the Lady."

The male stood beside the Lady – another Warlord Prince, big and blond, wearing the Ebon-Grey and with no tremor in the hand that held the blade at Bruce's throat. Bruce's instinct was to step back, but the dark stranger strained forward, the instinctive territorial reaction of a Warlord Prince.

"Prince Thor."

It sounded like a warning but the Warlord Prince didn't budge. "Lady."

"He won't attack me."

"You can't know that."

"I have the girl. He won't hurt her."

The blond Warlord Prince considered this for a long moment, then took a step back,. But the set of his jaw and the look in his eyes said that if Bruce made one wrong move, the Warlord Prince wouldn't hesitate to take him down.

And with the retreat of the other Warlord Prince, the stranger inside him backed down, leaving him just a Green-Jewelled Prince again.

He saw the Queen blink at the change in his psychic scent, heard the murmured oaths of her males, but his attention was on the street and the carnage in it. Four of Blonsky's friends dead at Bruce's hands, three more being held at bay by the Queen's males.

And Blonsky...

Blonsky was standing with his hands spread and shaking, a cut bleeding on his arm which he paid no mind. The red-headed Black Widow who'd opened the door to the Healer's house had blades at Blonsky's gut and balls, and the look of a witch who wouldn't hesitate to make the cut. Even as Bruce watched, she leaned in a little closer, her eyes a very intent blue.

"Lady," Blonsky croaked in appeal to the Queen.

"Natasha."

"I only need a minute," said the Widow, her voice smooth and thin – with the jagged edges beneath clearly audible. Bruce could hear the hatred in it, and so did Blonsky, because he paled.

"You don't have a minute," came the crisp reply. "The girl's father needs a Healer."

When the other witch turned her head, the Queen held her gaze. A moment later, the blades vanished and the Black Widow turned her back on Blonsky, almost contemptuously. "As the Queen commands."

The Queen winced, but looked down at Reva. "Lady Natasha will go with you back to your parents' farm and see your father. She's not a Healer, but she knows the healer's arts."

"But what about Bruce?"

Bruce knelt before Reva, taking her hands in his. "I can't come with you right now. You have to lead Lady Natasha back to your house to see your father. Okay? I'll come when the Queen allows it." _If the Queen allows it._

"We need Bruce here, at least for a little while," said the Queen, gently.

"He was only trying to protect me."

"Yes, he was. And he did, didn't he?"

It took a little more persuading to get Reva to go, but eventually she went, pausing to wave at Bruce from the corner before she, the Black Widow, and the male escorting them vanished around the corner.

"They'll take care of her?"

She looked at him strangely. "Of course."

"Lady..." Blonsky had found his voice and his feet, and was already moving to interpose himself between the Queen and Bruce. "You should be careful around him. He's a Queen killer."

Bruce snarled and took a step forward – or the stranger did. Then he stopped when the big Warlord Prince made a movement towards him.

The Queen turned, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Bruce. "Is this true?"

"Yes."

Around them, the males growled, and Blonsky's hand began to guide the Lady away. She brushed him off, an indecipherable emotion flitting across her face. "Why?"

Bruce stared. No-one had ever asked _why_ he'd killed Amelia Blonsky.

"Does it matter why?" Blonsky demanded, his expression contorting with sudden anger. A moment later, the mask fell back into place, although his eyes continue to spit hatred at Bruce. "She was my sister!"

"And I'm sorry for your loss," said the Queen, her voice gentle. "But not, perhaps, as sorry as I'd have been for the brother of the little girl who you gave your friend leave to rape."

"I..." Blonsky stuttered as the temperature drifted down, down, down, a slow-growing cold that bit into the flesh and chilled the bones to the core.

"'_A little taming and she'll quieten right down_,' I believe you said."

"My sister was a Queen from an aristo family! She was nothing like that country bra—"

"And was she raped and left broken for your family to look after?" The Queen asked, her voice sing-song and casual. "Or did she do the raping and breaking – like her brother?"

Blonsky's face twitched. "She was a Queen!"

"Even Queens should have standards." Her voice was even, level, and cold – so cold. "And so you know, here are mine. I do not condone rape. I do not approve of those who would condone it. I do not want them anywhere I rule and I will not suffer them to live where my rule holds sway. And since I am Queen here, and I do not want you in my Territory, you are exiled from this town and anywhere else I hold sway. This is my judgement."

Bruce shivered, even as the wild stranger within him exulted in triumph. Whatever happened to him, this was right – this was justice.

Blonsky went still.

Then he snarled and his hands gleamed with Jewelled power as he lunged at the Queen.

The stranger in Bruce moved without thought, leaping from Prince to Warlord Prince in an instant with the viciousness and violence that came so naturally to the caste. The blade appeared in his hands, gleaming with Grey-Jewelled power as it sliced through Red shields and white flesh in a spatter of blood. Blonsky cried out – a howl of pain and agony, and Bruce turned, the blade curving around and down to cut deep into the other man's chest before yanking it out.

But Blonsky was still strong enough to make the transition to demon-dead; and Bruce's other self wasn't going to leave an enemy behind him. He struck deep and hard with Jewelled strength, burning out Blonsky's Jewels and mind, until there was nothing left of him but a whisper in the Darkness.

At that moment Bruce felt whole. As though he wasn't two people in one body, but just one man. And he shuddered with the pleasure of it. So dangerous. Too dangerous.

But then so was the Queen who watched him, surprised and a little wary at what he was.

Her males were staying their hands, but it all came down to her.

And the rough stranger within him retreated, accepting her will and her judgement on them both.

"Lady Blonsky was twisted," Bruce said, answering the question she'd asked before Blonsky attacked her, earning himself death instead of exile. "And her family hid her, protected her. They provided victims for her." His gut churned, remembering those faces, those bodies, the way the house had seemed full of clawed shadows.

Cold hands closed over his, anchoring him in the now, soothing the anger that rose in him so easily at the memory.

"And so you executed her and earned her brother's enmity."

"Yes."

"Hard justice but still justice." She hesitated. "Which one of you did it?"

"I don't remember. Maybe both of us. Lady—" He hesitated. "I've been this way for nearly five years. No-one knows why – the best Healers and Black Widows can't tell me, and no scholar's ever seen anything like me before."

"A Warlord Prince who wears the Grey, and a Prince who wears the..."

"Green." Bruce shrugged but didn't look away from her. "I don't know what I am."

"Does it matter what you are?"

"When I carry this...other side...within me, yes, Lady, it does. I don't know if he's safe."

He felt the tug of connection with her. So did the wild stranger: the other male who was him and not-him, all at once. But belonging or not, Bruce wasn't going to lie to her about the danger that lay within him – a man divided in himself. Would a Queen like her – with plenty of strong males around her – want what he was, even if he was hers?

She studied him for a moment, a long, considering look.

"He's a Warlord Prince," she said at last. "Of course he's not 'safe'. But he's not evil or twisted, if that's what you're worried about."

"How can you be sure?"

"Oh, I'm sure. The question is how can you _not_ be sure?" When he hesitated, she smiled. "You're mine, and so is the Warlord Prince. I'm going to keep you both."

**tbc**


	11. Dying of Curiosity

**SUMMARY**: _Darcy wondered if she'd been a little bit too emphatic, but the truth was that she was curious._

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 11: Dying Of Curiosity**

Darcy was more than a little relieved that she was partnered with Prince Coulson for the evening.

Not that there was anything wrong with Lord Barton – actually, Darcy thought he was the better looking of the two – but he did tend to look just a little bit stern, and everyone knew he was devoted to Lady Romanoff, who was a Black Widow and about a hundred years old, even if she did only look like she was in her mid-twenties.

But when Thor and Jane had come past the Sanctuary with the carriage to pick her up for dinner, she'd had this sudden, horrible thought that Maria would bring an escort and she'd be left playing fifth wheel.

Not exactly her idea of a fun night.

However, when they'd arrived at the restaurant, she'd been seated next to Prince Coulson, who'd been attentive and courteous, and very much the perfect escort.

It was enough to make a witch wish she was a Queen.

"You look like you haven't been sleeping well," she said to Maria after the meal and the wine were ordered, and the menus taken away. Lord Barton was telling Thor and Jane about the work being completed on the residence. "Too many parties at Stark Manor?"

"Too many meetings at Stark Manor," Maria replied, sipping at her wine. "Rhodey – Lord Rhodes – finally marshalled the border guards sufficiently to get the leaders all in one place, and the discussion was mostly about border defences, and opening communications with the border Territories."

"I guess you've already got a connection with Asgard Territory," Darcy shot a look across the table at Thor where he was grinning at something Jane was saying. Jane had gotten so lucky when she'd found him out in a field. It was enough to make a Priestess wish she'd been out stargazing and fallen over a sexy, dark-Jewelled Warlord Prince in the night. "Have you decided on your Blood triangle yet?"

There was plenty of speculation about the court that would form around Maria – and plenty of jostling among Blood males seeking the opportunity to serve in her First Circle – or possibly even in her bed.

Every Queen's court held a trio of males – the Blood triangle – the most trusted, intimate members of her court. The Steward of the court managed the financial and social affairs of the Queen, the Master of the Guard looked after matters of her security and safety, and the Consort saw to the emotional and physical well-being of the woman.

Steward and Master of the Guard were usually filled by older males, trusted and reliable, but the position of Consort could be filled by any male to whom the Queen offered the Consort's Ring.

Darcy had heard more than a few whispers about the young Blood males trying to bring themselves to the notice of the Queen. Later tonight, at the theatre, there'd be plenty of swaggering young bucks strutting around trying to get Maria to admire their cocks.

The question nobody could answer was whether the Queen would duly admire – or even notice.

Of course, Maria hadn't yet had her Virgin Night, so a Consort was a moot point until she'd been safely seen through her first sexual experience and come through it with her inner web – the ability to do Craft and wear Jewels – intact.

And that was _another_ matter of speculation – who was going to take the Queen through her Virgin Night? Of course, not something one could ask at the dinner table...

"It's under discussion," Maria said with a sideways look at Prince Coulson, referring to the choice of her Blood triangle.

"Is that what we're calling it?"

Maria ignored him and looked to Darcy. "And when we weren't meeting with the border guards, there were social events all over the place, none of which seemed able to go on without me."

"Well, you are the Queen, you know..."

"It's not something I'm going to forget when everyone keeps reminding me," she said, looking pointedly at Coulson, who just smiled. It seemed the argument was an old one, long since lost its sting.

"What news from the borders?" Thor asked, his deep voice carrying over the table. "No sign of any more Hydra?"

Maria, Coulson, and Barton exchanged glances. "No," Barton said. "It looks like the attack last year was the last of it."

"And the Red Skull?" Jane asked, curiously. "Wasn't there a Blood male behind it all?"

Both Maria and Barton looked to Coulson. The Prince cleared his throat, his Jewel gleaming in the necklet he wore beneath the open throat of his shirt. "A group of males was sent to hunt down the Red Skull, his location mostly based on rumour. Since then..." He glanced at Maria, "After the last Hydra attack, we found someone with a visual identification of the Red Skull and passed it on to the leader of the hunting party."

"I heard he used to be in Lady Peggy's court – her Consort?"

"Yes," Coulson answered, smiling. "Prince Rogers. He's a legend in many circles—"

"Or just Coulson's," Barton said in mock-undertones.

"—an unparalleled warrior, and a man of honour. It's said he swore on Lady Peggy's grave to avenge her death if it took him the rest of his life."

Darcy sighed a little, not entirely immune to the thought of a male who'd swear to avenge her or die trying. "He's one of the long-lived races, isn't he? And still alive?"

"So far as we know."

"It's been months since we've heard from any of them, though." Barton pointed out, his voice practical. "They might all be whispers in the darkness. Given that the Red Skull started all this over twenty years ago and we only got a hint that he even existed this last year..."

"Rogers wore the Grey," Coulson said. "Even if he died, if he had the slightest bit of strength, he'd become demon-dead and continue the pursuit. That's the kind of man he is."

"You sound as though you knew him," Thor noted.

"I met him once when Lady Peggy's court passed through my village. I was a child and he was...memorable." There was a hint of sheepishness in Prince Coulson's voice.

"Not exactly his best friend," Lord Barton drawled.

"No more than Prince Howlett is yours, Clint," Maria remarked with sideways look, and it was Barton's turn to look sheepish.

Thor interrupted before the teasing could continue. "What do you think of this situation, Lady? It pertains to your safety, after all."

Darcy watched as Maria turned the stem of her wine glass around between her fingers. "The Hydra are gone. We've had no sighting of them since...since last Winsol. The Red Skull..." She stared at the wine, liquid red in the candlelight of the dinner table. "The Red Skull is being dealt with. I was given that assurance."

Curiosity shone on both Jane and Thor's faces, but they were too polite to ask. Darcy wasn't, but waiters began hovering with their food, and when they'd laid the plates down, the maitre'd wished to check that everything was to their satisfaction. After that, there was food and conversation that had nothing to do with mysterious promises given to Queens, much to Darcy's dismay.

But Darcy was nothing if not curious and persistent. That was one of the reasons she and Jane were friends. Of course, Jane's curiosity was about Craft and the things the Blood could do with spells and Jewelled power, and Darcy's curiosity was about people and the things that went on in their lives, but it was still curiosity.

The group ate dinner, discussed Prince Stark's engagement to Miss Potts, the peculiar nature of Prince Banner's caste, and the play that they were going to see tonight. They decided dessert would wait for after the play, and the ladies went to freshen up in the powder room before they headed off to the theatre.

"So," Darcy said as Maria checked her reflection and decided that all she needed to do was tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear, "Have you decided who's going to be taking care of your Virgin Night?"

"Darcy!"

Darcy rolled her eyes at Jane, who was blushing and looking rather too horrified. "What? It's not like everyone isn't speculating about it. And if a Priestess who's going to oversee her Offering to the Darkness can't ask, then who can?"

"I guess you're not beating around the bush," Maria murmured. "Yes, we've decided."

"Oh, that's nasty," Darcy said when no answer was forthcoming. "All right, then, who is it?"

"Does it matter, so long as it's done?" Maria leaned back against the powder table.

"Well, yeah! You're a Queen – the first major Queen since the Phoenix Court dissolved, and the first Territory Queen in, oh, twenty years or something. That's nearly longer than I've been alive! Of course people are curious about who's going to take care of your Virgin Night, who's going to serve in your court, and who's going to be your Blood triangle."

Darcy wondered if she'd been a little bit too emphatic, but the truth was that she was curious. And Maria was the kind of witch out of whom you had to drag every last bit of information, because she never offered any of it herself.

"If you don't want us to pry into it, then we won't." And that was Jane, being conciliatory. "It won't kill us."

"It won't kill you," Darcy retorted, good humoured. "_I _might die of curiosity."

Maria eyed them for a moment, then turned back to the mirror, staring into it as though she was only just seeing her reflection – or not seeing it at all. "The matters of the court are not up for discussion."

"Is that with lesser beings or just with us?"

"With anyone," came the repressive reply.

Darcy and Jane exchanged looks, recognising that there was something else at play here. Jane was willing to let it go by; Darcy wasn't. "You mean you're not going to discuss this with anyone – even Prince Fury?"

"Prince Fury isn't the Queen," Maria said and although her voice was level, Darcy rather thought it was a bit too cool. Trouble in that quarter? Well, it was rumoured that Prince Fury wasn't happy with the addition of Prince Banner to the court, although exactly why wasn't certain.

Of course, there were the rumours that Prince Banner had killed a Queen out in the West – although, so far as Darcy knew, nobody had asked the direct question – so maybe Prince Fury's concern was justified?

"It's a Queen's right to choose her own First Circle," Jane observed, "even if the males she chooses don't always get along with each other. Thor said that the males in his mother's First Circle still sometimes argue – and in Asgard, things can get very bloody and violent very fast. Whatever the choices you make, I'm sure they'll be the right choices for you."

"And if you need someone to talk them over with..."

"Darcy!" Jane rolled her eyes, but Maria smiled.

"The offer is appreciated. Even if the questions aren't."

"If you don't ask, you don't get."

"Well, you're not getting anything anyway, Darcy."

"But at least now I know I'm not going to get any answers!"

Maria was frowning again, her brows drawn together. "We're needed outside," she said abruptly. "Now."

At first Darcy thought it was a distraction, because everything looked normal out in the restaurant, nothing that might have prompted Maria's concern. But both Prince Coulson and Lord Barton's heads turned towards Maria as she crossed the room with swift strides.

"What is it?"

"A...feeling. Like a call, only..."

"Only?"

"Stronger. Someone needs me." Abruptly her gaze focused, and she headed for the door, only to find her way swiftly blocked by Prince Coulson. "What?"

Half the restaurant were already on their feet – the male half – ready to spring into action if they were needed.

It was Thor who spoke first, a deep, gentle rumble of concern. "It may not be safe, Lady."

"Maybe not, but I still have to go." She looked up at him, wide-eyed and serious. "You can come and loom protectively if it makes you feel better, Prince Odinsson, but I'm going."

And she went, followed by Thor and Barton. Prince Coulson glanced at Jane and Darcy, as though caught between whether he should stay and escort them or follow after his Queen. Darcy took the decision out of his hands, grabbing Jane's hand and heading for the door after Maria. No way were they going to miss this!

Maria was already heading down the street towards the landing web, nearly running in her haste to get there before whatever was about to happen happened. Thor was keeping pace with her in the darkness, and Barton was only a few strides behind.

"This is crazy!" Jane said as they hurried along the street, Coulson keeping just abreast of them instead of rushing on ahead as Darcy was pretty sure he wanted to.

"Yeah, but aren't you curious?"

Ahead of them, the landing web was still and silent, illuminated by witchlights that streamed Maria's shadow out behind her as she reached the landing web and paused.

Quiet, with only the noises from the town behind them to fill the empty night.

A moment later, a man appeared in the middle of the pattern, misjudged his landing, and stumbled off the web, his every movement telegraphing his exhaustion as his legs seemed to give out from under him.

Maria caught him as he came down, sprawling in the grass by the web with an audible 'oof' that huffed all the breath out of her lungs.

In her lap, the man stirred, his expression blank as he looked up at her, frowning, before his brows drew together. "Lady?"

"You called me," she said, and it was almost a question.

Thor had called in a bladed weapon and was holding it ready, his posture tense, his expression careful and wary. Barton had called in a small crossbow and aimed it at the unknown male before Maria waved him down.

And Coulson nearly fell over his feet as he looked down into the handsome face and the dazed blue eyes that stared up at Maria with a faint frown in them. "Prince Rogers?"

**tbc**


	12. Strength In Service

**SUMMARY**: _No fault to Lady Hill that she wasn't the Queen he wanted, and this wasn't the court he remembered._

**NOTES**: Steve and his backstory was easy. Getting the gist of that backstory in? Much more difficult. Hope you enjoy!

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 12 – Strength In Service**

The air of celebration in the halls of the residence was too much for Steve to bear, so he fled out into the wintry cold of the gardens.

It wasn't that he begrudged the court its pleasure in the Queen's successful Offering to the Darkness last night; SHIELD Territory needed a good, strong Queen, and there was no doubt that Lady Maria Hill filled all the requirements.

But the halls he walked down were thick with the memories of people long dead; the rooms he moved through were noisy with conversations long faded. And the occasional glimpse of something familiar only jarred him all the more – Fury's stride across the room, something about the way Tony Stark told a joke that reminded Steve so much of his father, the psychic touch of a Queen...

_A_ Queen, but not _Steve's_ Queen.

No fault to Lady Hill that she wasn't the Queen he wanted, and this wasn't the court he remembered.

"_The world's moved on,_" Fury had said yesterday. "_You can move with it, Prince, or you can be left behind._"

Nowhere was that more obvious than in the Warlord Prince whom Steve remembered as a young male on the fringes of Peggy's court, and now faced as a mature Warlord Prince and the dominant male in Lady Maria's court.

Now, standing on the threshold of the Queen's garden, Steve was reminded once more of how things had changed.

The garden he remembered as elegant and well-tended was...wilder. Less confined, even in the leafless outlines of the bushes and trees. The witch whose soul reflected this garden understood and appreciated grace and peace, but yearned for a place that represented what was wild and fierce and raw.

And she sat on the wooden bench with the stark skeletons of the trees rising around and behind her, her gaze rising from contemplation of the frozen pond and frost-touched grass.

"Prince."

"Lady." Steve took a step forward, unthinkingly drawn to her before he remembered he didn't have the right – and didn't want it, either. "My apologies for intruding."

He turned to go.

"Prince? How did you do it?"

Steve paused. The question sounded...lost. Almost plaintive. And not a question he would have expected from her. "You gave me the key to him, Lady – his face, his psychic scent. You and the male he trapped."

"Jamie." He could hear the grief in her voice as she spoke the name. "His name was Jamie. And I wasn't talking about the Red Skull, Prince. I was talking about the way you came to court."

When he turned around, she was watching him, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes pale and steady and questioning in the fading light.

"I don't understand."

"Phil said you grew up in a landen village. That you were hidden there, unnoticed, until you were old enough to make the Offering. A Blood male discovered you, brought you out into Blood society and Lady Peggy's court."

His mouth was dry as she spoke, the quiet, low resonance of her voice weaving around him like a spell of memory. "That's correct."

"You went from living in a landen village to being the Consort of a Territory Queen."

Steve began to see where this was going. "It's not the same."

"Not exactly, no." She laid her cheek on her knees. "It's still closer than anyone else around here."

"From what I hear," he said, coming down a few steps, "You were trained for this by the Lady Grey herself. That's very different from my childhood."

She tilted her head back to regard him in the small space. "Will you tell me?"

Steve thought of the years he'd spent in Brooklin, a long-lived Blood child in a short-lived landen village. He thought of the kindnesses of some of the children and the taunts and mockery of others – both sets growing into adults while he remained a child. He thought of Bucky, standing in the darkness of his dreams, head tilted, eyes wide, _You don't know what a Warlord Prince is? You_ are_ one!_

He'd never spoken of it to anyone – not in detail, not even to Peggy.

He wasn't sure he was ready to do so now.

But the Lady needed something – an anchor, a reassurance – something. Even if he wasn't hers, she was a Queen and he was a Warlord Prince of the Blood, and while he could deny her, it wasn't in him to do so.

"You've lived back among the Blood for the last five years," he said, extemporising. "You don't need my story. You have your own."

"Yes," she said, and there was a note of bitterness in her voice. "The witch who came out of nowhere, destined to become Queen. Brought up in the Phoenix Court, left to survive in the woodlands, discovered by a Warlord Prince..."

"The Queen who defeated the Hydra and passed on the key to the destruction of the Red Skull," Steve added gently. "It makes for a good story."

"Maybe it does. But it's my _life_." Her voice was soft and her eyes steady. "And I don't know if..."

Overhead, something winged its way through the twilight – the flutter of feathers and a cry that rang out through the evening air.

"You don't know if...?"

"I saw Lady Grey's court fall," she said, choosing not to finish her sentence. "I saw what happens when a Queen dies. You know. You've been there."

"Yes." Shock and disbelief. Anger and grief. A wild fury among the males that tore their souls apart, questions and recriminations and demands that shredded the mind and the strength. It was a terrible thing for a court to lose a Queen in her prime. "I've been there."

"I don't want that for them."

Her fear shivered the air between them, and Steve saw a shadow pass across her eyes. "What did you see?"

Her eyes were already closed, her hands clenching convulsively on her trousers. "Jewelled dust spread out across the land," she murmured. "A bitter wind sings above hollow reeds and the darkness hungers. The land is rich and fertile but there's no-one to tend it. I'm sitting on the ground in an empty circle and... I'm... I'm..."

Steve was across the garden in an instant, the fear and terror staining the psychic currents of the garden. He pulled her up, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her to break her out of the vision. "Lady!"

She screamed, a tearing sound that ripped through Steve's mind. He called her name, but it didn't break her out of the vision. Instead she did _something_ with her mind, and he felt the air around them grow thick with a psychic storm – jagged-edged psychic knives that were impervious to his attempts to shield.

*Lady!* He felt a flicker of reaction, but the psychic storm was growing fiercer with every moment that passed and his mind already felt bruised.

He took a deep breath and opened his inner barriers to her, trying to reach her. She'd gone somewhere beyond physical and psychic connection, and he needed to connect with her more intimately. It was a risk – with his inner barriers open, he'd be defenceless against anything she might do to him, and if she struck right, even the Grey would give way to the Green... *_Lady!_*

Around him, the garden vanished in a clash of Green and Summer-sky strength. Steve glimpsed a figure sitting in a stone circle, her head bowed, her hands at her throat. Then the swirl of Green-and-Summer-sky power swept across it like a curtain, obliterating the vision. The garden faded back in around him – around _them_: him and the Queen.

And Steve stared at her, suddenly seeing - truly seeing her - grey eyes, proud bones, and beauty, yes, but also strength beneath the youth, determination bethind the reserve, protectiveness behind the fear.

Not _his_ Queen, perhaps, but a Queen worth serving.

The certainty of that knowledge shook something in him, left him floundering for something to say as he held her shoulders in a grip that was probably leaving bruises, but which she didn't shake off as she gulped air.

"Maria?" Footsteps and voices came closer, and she turned and caught her breath, trying to twist away.

He slid his arm around her back, easing her down to the wooden bench. "You okay?"

Then there were witchlights and Warlords, Prince Coulson pausing at the edge of the garden when he saw Steve, and Prince Fury striding in without hesitation. His Green-backed temper whipped through the garden, sharp and honed – and rising sharply to the killing edge when he saw who sat with his Queen.

Steve's own temper rose – the instinctive clash of Warlord Princes in territorial dispute.

Once upon a time, twenty-five years ago, Steve had been the one with the power, with the influence. Fury had been the young hotblood in Peggy's Fifth Circle, causing trouble, making waves. Now, Fury was the authority, and Steve was the outsider – the one who didn't belong to the Queen under Steve's arm.

The Queen who answered her males as she hadn't answered Steve.

"Nick, I'm fine."

"What happened?" Coulson came forward, treading lightly across the frosted grass. His gaze rested on Steve, wary, but also respectful – unlike the sharp sense of Fury's temper.

"It was nothing. Just a vision that caught me and I stumbled. I was startled, but Prince Rogers caught me."

She made it sound so bloodless – so calm. But Steve could feel the tension in the muscles of her back, and wasn't sure whether to be admiring or appalled at the blatant lie. But the answer helped Fury step back from the killing edge, although from the narrowed look Fury gave Steve, he didn't step back very far.

"You've had a long night, and an equally long day, Lady. You should be resting."

"I will. I'd just... I just wanted some time out here, alone." The smile twitched her lips as she looked at the older Warlord Prince. "I don't need a keeper, Nick."

"That's a matter of opinion," he muttered. "All right. We'll give you time alone."

Fury's gaze rested on Steve, making it plain he expected Steve to get up and walk away.

Steve wasn't moving an inch until he was ordered. And Fury didn't have the power to order him – not officially, not yet. "I'd like a word with the Lady – if she permits."

She looked up at him, a steady regard through her lashes that might have been an invitation in another witch. Then she turned back to Fury and to Coulson and Barton beyond him. "It's okay," she told them, and her voice carried up to the shadowy figures who waited and watched from the terrace. "I'll be in soon. Promise."

They weren't entirely happy about it, but they went.

Steve thanked the Darkness that Stark had gone home two hours ago. That was one Warlord Prince who wouldn't have stepped away without a fight.

And that was something Steve was going to have to negotiate before he agreed—

The thought stuttered to a halt, and he stared at the crisp profile of the witch beside him. When had he decided to stay?

She was watching them leave, something tender as a smile in her expression, although her expression hardly changed. The quiet curtain of the night closed in around them once more, and Steve added a Grey aural shield to ensure they wouldn't be overheard. This was going to be a private audience.

"What did you want to say, Prince?"

"Have you seen it before?"

"Seen what?"

She spoke so coolly, Steve felt a moment of doubt – had he imagined it?

Yet in his mind's eye rose the vision of the stone circle and the woman who knelt in the centre of it, clawing at her throat and the Jewelled web that threatened to strangle her – the web that gleamed with her own colours. An impossible choice: break herself or die by her own Jewels...

_I saw Lady Grey's court fall. I don't want that for them._

The eyes that looked back at him were remote and careful – such old eyes in a witch who'd only just made the Offering.

Steve remembered those eyes at the edge of the Twisted Kingdom.

_He felt the weight of the nightmare realm pushing against him at the Grey. Darkness only knew what she felt wearing only the Summer-sky. But her eyes had been bright and lucid as she knelt over the body of a fallen male, her hands splayed on his chest, her mouth slightly open in surprise as she saw Steve._

_Neither the fallen male, nor the Warlord Prince whose hand gripped her shoulder seemed to notice him then – only she did._

_*You're the one Prince Rhodes said was hunting the Red Skull. Do you still want him?*_

_*Yes.*_

_The face was flung up between them – an older man, thin and ascetic, with flame-filled eyes and a bitter mouth. *This is he.*_

_Steve caught his breath. He'd never seen the man in the flesh, but he knew him from Erskine's memories. *Schmidt.*_

_*You know him?*_

_*He killed a friend of mine.*_

_He'd seen the images in Erskine's mind before the older male faded into the Darkness, felt the reminder of Erskine's teachings: honour first, and everything else will fall in place._

_She studied him, like a wild creature considering trust. *He made the Hydra,* she said as she looked back down at the male, who was speaking with the Warlord Prince in pained, broken gasps. *Jamie says he won't make any more.*_

_Steve looked down at Jamie, met dark blue eyes filled with too much painful knowledge, and understood what Jamie hadn't told the Queen – that this had a price and Jamie was going to pay it._

The Hydra male – Jamie – had thought her worth dying for: a Queen worth protecting. And Steve had entered into that pact when he'd kept silent, when he'd accepted Jamie's sacrifice as needful. He'd kept the pact when he'd leapt into the Darkness after finishing the kill on Schmidt and used the tangled threads of a focus web to draw him back to the Queen who'd given him his vengeance.

_Blood the web and focus your will on it._ Peggy's voice had echoed in his mind as he called it in. _It's one use only, but it will bring you home._

Once, he'd believed he'd be coming home to Peggy.

That dream was gone. Love was gone. All Steve had left was service.

He hoped that was enough.

"I will serve."

She stared at him for a moment, then snorted – a swift huff of laughter that puffed in the cold air. "I haven't asked for you, Prince."

"You can't allow a Grey-Jewelled Warlord Prince to stay in the Territory if he's not in service."

"That service doesn't have to be with me." Her eyes rested on his face, sharp and almost-amused. "I have more than enough dark-Jewelled Warlord Princes to boss me around already. Why would I want one more?"

"What's one more when you've already got several?"

"I didn't want the several in the first place. I didn't want a court." Maria looked at him as though daring him to say something. "I didn't want males to serve me. When Prince Fury found me, my only concern was the forest in which I was living, the nearby town. I was...content."

"You miss it."

"Yes." She didn't quite smile as she kicked at the ground and stared at the lifted toe of her boot. "Darcy thinks I'm mad. Why would I want to live out in the middle of nowhere when I could be Queen of SHIELD Territory?"

"So why _are_ you here?"

Dark hair wisped in soft ripples off her shoulder as she looked at him. "Because they needed me."

It was that simple – and that powerful.

"And if I needed you?"

Her mouth quirked and she arched delicate brows at him, more amused than flattered. "You don't need _me_, Prince. Any Queen would do."

"I'm offering my service to _you_. Will you take it?"

He lifted his right hand, like a male offering a Queen his escort. His right hand under her left, his strength in her service. The gesture was at once familiar and yet discomfortingly strange – offering himself was a new experience. The last time he'd taken service with a Queen, he hadn't been old enough or confident enough to offer his service to Peggy.

In a way, he hadn't had to – he had belonged to Peggy, service and Jewels, heart, mind, and body.

Maria Hill didn't need him or want him. He wasn't hers; she had no obligation to him.

But she had him anyway. Steve felt the certainty settle inside. This witch sitting beside him wasn't his Queen, but she was a good Queen. A Queen worth protecting with his life and his Jewels. And if it took his life and his Jewels to keep that vision from coming to pass – stone circle, weeping Queen, broken strength – then he'd count that a fair price.

If she was going to accept him.

The moment stretched out, silence in the garden and a breathless catch in the air as she looked down at his offered hand.

Then Maria placed her hand atop his, long fingers, lightly calloused, but graceful and strong as they curled over his knuckles.

"All right," she said. "I accept."

**tbc**


	13. Hers

**SUMMARY**: _They were hers. Her responsibility, her duty, her court._

**NOTES**: Thank you so much for taking this journey with me! I hope you enjoy this final part of the story!

**Assembly, Care, and Feeding of a Queen's Court**

**Chapter 13 - Hers**

Of all the parties that were on offer on Winsol Eve throughout the Territory, the most-desired invitation was always the one from Stark Manor.

Whatever else could be said of Tony Stark, he knew how to throw a party.

However, this year the expected invitation failed to materialise for many aristo Bloods in the Territory, much to their consternation and dismay. Given that the Lady Maria Hill had taken up her Jewels and chosen her court and was now officially ruling SHIELD Territory from the Aer Gerulus residence, it seemed as though this should be a year in which there would surely be a Winsol party to end all parties – particularly since Stark was one of the males serving in her First Circle.

It was _expected_.

Maria was perfectly aware of what was expected of her as the new Territory Queen.

She was also quite determined not to spend the entire season of Winsol in a blur of events.

"_I think we can arrange for a quiet Winsol Eve,_" Pepper had said with a smile when Maria had found her in the housekeeper's retreat with a request. "_Just the First Circle?_"

"_Yes. And thank you. I know that the Winsol party is usually a big thing in this part of the Territory..._"

"_Maria._" One hand lifted to stop her apology, an impish tilt to the serene expression. "_Don't apologise for making less work for me and the manor staff._"

"_Should I apologise to Stark instead?_"

This time, the smile was decidedly wicked. "_I think you'll find Tony hasn't enjoyed the Winsol Eve party for the last five years. He kept putting it on because it was expected._"

And, of course, when Maria brought it up to Stark, she discovered Pepper was right.

So Winsol Eve had been a quiet day – arrival at the Manor, the afternoon spent tromping through the snow on a tour of the Manor's winter scenery, dinner with her First Circle, and now conversation with the witches in the warmed library.

Maria kicked off her shoes so she could wriggle her toes at the fire.

"Queen's court, dress-code: shoeless," said Jane with a laugh as she sat down next to Maria.

Darcy bounced into the chair opposite and promptly kicked off her own shoes. "I like it. Although it's beyond frosty outside, so the barefoot trend probably isn't going to catch on."

Pepper had suggested the men and women separate for a while after dinner, and Maria was relieved by the suggestion. There were moments when she became uncomfortably aware that she held the lives and honour of these people in her hands – the females as much as the males, but the males more urgently, simply because of the way Blood society worked.

_My life is yours. Take what you need._

Nine days ago – two days before the Winsol holiday, twelve males had knelt before her and said those words. They'd sworn their lives to her service, their surrender to her will.

To each of them, Maria had replied, _Your service is accepted; my honour is yours._

Each time she'd accepted the oath, she'd quaked inside, remembering that last day in the Phoenix Court – the anger, the bitterness, the recriminations, the grief. She'd seen the results of Jean's death and the impact it had on the males who'd served and belonged to Jean, from the males of her Blood triangle to her adolescent son, Nate.

Maria didn't want that for her males.

Queens weren't taught to think about what happened when they died – what happened to the males in their court who'd given them lifetime service. Yet Maria couldn't put her vision out of her head – not entirely. She could push it aside, or remind herself that what was seen didn't always have to be what came to pass, but it haunted her still.

"Are you okay?" Natasha offered her a small glass of white port, which Maria took with a smile to hide her worry.

"Just tired."

"And no wonder, either," said Pepper, gracefully taking a seat on the couch. "You've been run off your feet the last six days."

"Says the witch running Stark Manor," Maria returned.

Almost surprisingly, Pepper hadn't argued with Maria's insistence that she join them for dinner. Which either meant that Tony had been overbearing and bossy, or Pepper was accustoming herself to the idea that she was now First Circle and when the Queen requested her presence socially, her presence was expected.

"Well, you survived the Puceanu house party, anyway," said Darcy, now sprawled on the couch. "Did you see the girl? The one they're ashamed of because she apparently can't wear Jewels?"

"_How_ do you know all this?" Jane asked.

"I keep my eyes and ears open, of course." Darcy accepted a nutcake from the plate Pepper passed around and bit into it, before putting her hand over her mouth and speaking through it. "Well?"

Maria exchanged a look with Natasha. "Meggan was the daughter, right?"

"Yes. The quiet blonde."

"She seemed nice enough – a bit shy, perhaps."

Darcy snorted. "You know, I thought exactly the same thing of you the first time I met you at Jane's. And look how you turned out!"

Amused, Maria leaned back in the chair. "I was 'turned out' long before I met you, Darcy. And the Puceanu party was enjoyable enough."

"'Enjoyable enough,'" came the returning mutter. "I swear, being a Queen is wasted on you, Maria! The Puceanus are said to throw the best houseparties – but for the ones at Stark Manor," she hastily added with an apologetic look at Pepper.

"Such a reassurance to know we're being entertained by the best." Natasha exchanged a wry look with Pepper. "The howls of dismay were audible back in Aer Gerulus when people realised they weren't receiving an invite this year."

"They'll survive," Pepper said firmly. "The Queen's wishes come first."

Maria curled her feet up under her skirt, cradling her glass of port so it didn't spill on the fine material. "I wanted some quiet."

"And no wonder, after the formation of the court and the first few days of Winsol," said Jane, touching Maria's shoulder. "_I'm_ tired, and I'm not even attending half the events you are!"

"Yes, but, Jane, going out more than twice a week makes you think you qualify for social butterfly status," Darcy pointed out.

"We like staying in!"

"I can't imagine why." Darcy plumped her hand down on her chin and smirked, making Jane blush furiously. Maria coughed to cover her laugh. Then she sobered as Darcy turned big brown eyes on her. "And speaking of good reasons to stay in bed, _why_ did you offer Prince Rogers the position of First Escort?"

Confused, Maria looked at the other women in the room, trying to see if any of them understood Darcy's question. "Because he was willing to take service with me?"

"So why didn't you offer him the Consort's Ring?"

_Oh. _She'd expected the question, but she'd expected it would be asked long before this.

The answer was complicated, though.

"He's still not past the memory of Lady Peggy." Maria gave the simplest explanation. "And I don't particularly fancy having to share my lover with a ghost."

Not that she would have offered Steve Rogers the Consort's Ring even if he hadn't been mourning his Queen.

She was under no illusions as to why he'd chosen to serve her. Having stayed on the edges of the court ever since he'd returned from killing the Red Skull, ignoring the flirtatious looks from Darcy, and the subtle challenges from Tony, he'd only decided to serve in her court after he'd glimpsed her vision.

As Phil told it, there was no way he could have saved Lady Peggy. As Maria saw it, Prince Rogers thought that maybe he could save her as he hadn't managed to save his Queen.

And if that was his purpose in joining her court, Maria certainly wasn't going to use him in her bed. She didn't want saving from a Warlord Prince who didn't even belong to her.

It was just easier to explain it in terms of his reluctance rather than hers.

"And no lover on the horizon?"

"Can we talk about something other than the Queen's private life?" Maria inquired with some exasperation.

"Well, the other ladies here all have lovers, and nobody's interested in who _I'm_ bedding..."

Maria glared.

Natasha coughed and adroitly turned the conversation to the plans for the rest of the Winsol holiday, the tour of the Territory that was planned come the spring, and the Queen's Gifting of the land which was also planned for the spring.

Jane and Darcy were asking about the number of Queens available to gift to the land when the males asked permission to come in.

A few minutes later, Maria sat back and watched her First Circle mingle and talk among themselves, their quick glances her way quickly reassured with a brief smile or nod that at once soothed the males but gave her the space she needed for the moment.

Of course, there was always a male who pushed the boundaries.

This one, at least, she didn't mind – especially when he came bearing a mug of hot mulled wine.

Logan handed her the mug, pushed the plate of pastries aside and sat down on the coffee table, disdaining the couch. "Regrets, brat?"

Uncertainties? Yes. Regrets? "No."

"You've come a long way from the forest."

"But not so far from Jean's court." She wrapped her hands around the mug, glad of its warmth. "Did Jean... Was she ever...?"

*Was she ever scared?* Logan asked on a private thread. *All the time, I think. She was just past her majority when she started her rule. And we'd been fighting the Hydra for years at that point, with no end in sight.*

*So I shouldn't be scared? Is that it?*

*That's not it at all – if you'd let me finish.* Logan frowned at her, dark brows lowering. *You're allowed to be scared. Hell, if you weren't scared, I'd think there was something wrong with you. But you're strong enough not to let the fear control you – or you'd never have survived the forest."

Maria wasn't so sure.

Those first nights alone in the forest had been chilling – the emptiness of the cottage, the drugging fear that leeched through her when she thought of the court, of Ororo and Betsy and Marie, of Charles, Scott, and Logan, of Nate and the others who'd been her playmates. She'd wept and quivered and waited and wondered.

But in the end, what had moved her had been simple survival – the desire to live – and she'd learned strength.

*Is that why you left me there? To learn to live past the fear?*

*I left you there to survive. You learned to live past the fear all your own.* Logan glanced across at the others in the room. *You've got a good court here – good people around you. Even the ones I don't agree with.*

*But you won't take more than a one-year contract.*

*Not as Master of the Guard, no. You need a younger man to keep up with you.*

*You're not old, Logan.*

*No,* he replied seriously, *but I'm feeling it. Besides, Rogers is not only prettier than me, he also has a legend growing around him.* Logan didn't quite smile but there was a suspicious twinkle in his eyes when he looked at Maria. *Rather like a Queen I know.*

Maria glared. *Don't you start, too!*

Logan grinned broadly. *You don't need him in bed. But he's better with the men than I'll ever be. They respect and fear me, but he's the kind of leader they'll follow into Hell and back.*

*Hopefully it won't ever come to that.* But Maria could see what Logan meant. Even now, Steve was conversing easily with Bruce and Rhodey, his expression intent as he listened to whatever Rhodey was saying. His gaze flicked up to meet hers and after a moment he smiled. *I was thinking he might make a good second for you.*

*He'd make a better Master. I'll start training him when we settle into the winter routine.*

*You'll stay in the court, though? Afterwards?* The thought that he didn't want to serve her was painful – she knew she wasn't the Queen that Jean had been...

His hand covered hers. "Maria."

His use of her name shocked her into silence.

"Jean would be proud of you," he said gruffly. "She loved you as if you were as much hers as Nate – do you remember?"

The mulled wine must have been a little too hot. Her throat felt burned and her heart battered against her chest. "I remember."

_Arms around her and laughter in her ears. A finger brushing past her cheek and a press of soft lips against her forehead. Sharp warning temper when she'd done something stupid or forbidden, and pride and pleasure when Maria got it right. But always the assurance that she was loved and wanted by Jean and Scott, no matter what her own father had thought of her._

"You were so serious as a child – as though you knew the world would rest on your shoulders, she said. And then," Logan's voice roughened, "two nights before she died, she came to see me and said that if she wasn't there to see you become Queen and take up your court, I should pass on this message. That she loved you, and that you had greatness in you – the stuff of which legends are made – if you didn't let what you feared most hold you back."

Her head was spinning, unable to form a coherent thought, and her insides were trembling so hard that she didn't know why she wasn't shaking like a leaf.

"I know you don't set any store in being a legend – you'd be content to live quiet. But Jean saw the potential in you then, and I see it now." He met her gaze and the hand still resting on hers squeezed lightly. "I'll serve as long as you need me – but not because you're destined for greatness. Just because you're you – stubborn wilfulness and all. Okay?"

"Okay."

Logan leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Happy Winsol, brat."

He moved away as Phil and Clint came over, wanting her to settle a matter between them, and Maria listened to their chatter, and arbitrated because they needed her to and because they made her laugh. Still, her thoughts were elsewhere, and when the opportunity presented itself, she excused herself on the pretext of needing fresh air and made for the doors out to the balcony.

She felt the eyes upon her as she went, and called in a thick coat at the door, brandishing it at the room to indicate that she wasn't so fool as to go out into the cold in nothing more than an evening gown. Then, slipping it over her shoulders, she set a warming spell around her, and stepped through the door out into the snow.

The bite of the night gave her clarity as she formed a shield under her hands that would insulate her from the worst of the frozen stone balustrade. It also gave her a reason for the tears that suddenly stung her eyes.

_She loved you and saw greatness in you if you don't let what you fear hold you back._

She'd once asked Irene – the resident Black Widow in Jean's court – why, if the Hourglass Coven could see the future, they didn't tell people what was going to happen.

"_The future isn't written in stone, little one,_" Irene had answered, brushing her white hair back from her eyes – the exact colour of Maria's Summer-sky Jewel. "_And even if it was, stone can be broken._"

_Don't let it hold you back._

It was right to fear failing them – right to fear what might happen to them without her. It was part and parcel of the bargain between a Queen and her court – her care for their service. But it didn't need to hamstring her. Her court deserved better of her than freezing fear – all of them, from Bruce who still had little idea about the limits of his Warlord Prince, to Rhodey who was perfectly aware of his strengths and weaknesses as a Purple-Dusk Warlord, and comfortable with it.

They were _hers_. Her responsibility, her duty, her court.

And she would protect and nurture them and this Territory with everything in her, either until the vision of her own breaking came to pass, or until she died.

And that was _her_ oath to them.

"Maria?"

Nick was standing at the doorway, the light of the room behind him casting his face further into shadow. She knew what he was asking of her, and what she should answer. But affection and memory rose up inside her and what she said was something else entirely. "I never thanked you for bringing me out of the forest."

His brows rose in surprise. "Seems there wasn't much to be thankful for," he said, dryly. "A run-down residence, a town that wouldn't tithe, and no society beyond a bunch of muscle-bound cocks."

"And on top of it all, you had an ungrateful little Queen who didn't really want anything to do with you and your people."

"I had a nervous young witch – with good reason not to trust," he corrected her. "And we worked out okay in the end, didn't we?"

Maria felt her mouth twitch at the corner. "Yes, we did," she agreed. "And I want to say thank you now."

The serious face broke into a faint smile. "You're welcome, Lady. It's even been a pleasure." His eyes gleamed. "Sometimes."

Beyond him, inside the house, Pepper paused by the door in the act of carrying a tray and tilted her head to indicate that they should come in, before Rhodey took the tray gently from her hands, ignoring her protests.

Maria found herself smiling. This was the court who served her, the witches and males in her First Circle – a court worthy of her strength and protection.

"They're serving the rum. Shall we go in?"

Nick held out his arm. She crossed the terrace and placed her hand atop his and they made their way inside.

The others were waiting by the fire, the little cups of hot blooded rum gleaming on a silver tray. The cups were made to be shared between two – a sip of fiery liquid in toast and remembrance.

Maria let Nick hold the cup and, as the Queen, spoke the words of thanksgiving.

"To the Darkness that formed us, and the land that gives us strength – for the glory of Witch – she who represents all that we are as Blood, and all that we are meant to be."

The room filled with murmurs of agreement and she took the proffered silver cup from Nick with a small smile of thanks.

_I am theirs, and they are mine._

Then Maria drank to the Blood and the Darkness and everything she would and could be.

**fin**

**FINAL NOTES:** Thank you for reading my story – I'd love to know what you thought of it and whether you enjoyed it.

There was art created for this story – the extremely talented **neptune47** drew pics of Maria and Tony, and Maria and Steve at her deviantart and her LJ. Please go and comment and appreciate her hard work!

A sequel is planned, most likely out around April or May next year, which will tie in a lot more from the Avengers movie. In the meantime, I hope the readers who've enjoyed this story will enjoy my other Avengers-related stories, both the gen and the shippy ones.

Thanks again for reading, and special thanks to those of you who commented along the way to let me know you were reading and/or what you liked about it!

Have a wonderful Year's End!


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